Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Should Students Be Taught With or Without an IDE?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the why-the-zero-sum dept.

bblazer asks: "Beginning this next school year, there is a strong possibility I will be teaching an intro to Java and an intro to Python course at the local community college. I was wondering what the prevailing wisdom is when it comes to teaching languages - should students be taught with or without an IDE? I am a bit old school and wouldn't mind having them all use vi or emacs, but using a good IDE does have some advantages as well. I should note that the students I will be teaching will have had at least 1 semester of programming in VB or C++." Even though there is limited time in a semester, could a curriculum be constructed to accommodate both methods?

1 of 848 comments (clear)

  1. Re:I would say IDEs by rossifer · · Score: 5, Informative

    no.

    as long as they trust the editor to catch their mistakes, they'll never actually learn to avoid them; they'll simply let the IDE be their guide and never learn it.

    Exactly. I've been developing software for 12 years and I still go back to emacs whenever I want to learn a new technique, technology, or toolkit. The dev work may take a little bit longer, but I learn so much more when I have to search through directories or look up an interface in the documentation that you just don't get with an IDE.

    I strongly recommend staying close to the metal as possible when learning, then gradually getting more abstracted as your grasp of the underlying skill develops.

    (The AC is probably one of that group of programmers whose code I have to rewrite, but I guess we'll never know for certain... :-)

    Regards,
    Ross