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On 08/07/2016 10:04 PM, Alan McKinnon wrote: |
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> On 07/08/2016 19:36, james wrote: |
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>>> The interesting apps out there are mostly running python, go and |
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>>> (sometimes) lua. And that's what I observe in my day job - |
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>>> business/mobile ISP. |
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>> |
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>> |
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>> Look at the job listing on stackoverflow and elsewhere (java) is very |
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>> popular when they list several programming languages to meet the |
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>> requirements. I'm not promoting java, at all, but just stating that it |
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>> is very popular, on new projects (but not all) and it is a large and |
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>> frequent requirement, dictating by employers. Kids coming out of college |
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>> want a job, more than anything, and most are having java crammed down |
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>> their throats. So we should find a way to robustly |
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>> support those that need java. Nothing is precluding other languages |
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>> in my message. Personally I avoid java, unless it is critical to |
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>> a code or family of codes I need to run. |
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> |
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> |
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> I recommend Java as a teaching language at university level. |
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I've seen the fallout from trying to do that. |
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It's a horribly bad idea ... |
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> You get all the benefits of a C-like syntax without the overhead of |
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> learning to deal with C and/or C++. You don't have to deal with the |
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> toolchain (much), you can easily show correct implementations of OOP |
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> style without getting into generics (or, you can avoid Java generics |
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> altogether at this level and pretend they don't exist). |
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Java and OOP ? If you want to do things right, best to use something |
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proper like Eiffel or Oberon. And Java will be most excellent at |
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teaching about pointers (but there are no pointers!) to maximize the |
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learning curve gradient ... |
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On the upside your students will learn useless incantations along the |
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lines of "publicstaticvoidmain!" that they can't explain and copypasta :) |
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I've found these two a long time ago, and they still amuse me: |
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http://gentooexperimental.org/~patrick/keywords.java.txt |
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http://gentooexperimental.org/~patrick/helloworld.java.txt |
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> In short, what's not to like for teaching? All win not much lose. |
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> |
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> Well OK some kids come away thinking Java is the one and only, but they |
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> will have that too if Python is the teaching language. Realizing there |
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> are other things out there is part of the learning process. |
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> |
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> But, despite all that, Java is not special. It should run on Gentoo for |
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> anyone who wants it, just like things starting with P. |
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> |
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> You volunteering to do the grunt work? |
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> |
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Java works pretty well on Gentoo, I'm not quite sure what needs to be |
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fixed ... I mean, apart from our insane idea to "build from source" |
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which doesn't fit with the existing structures in the java ecosystem |
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