I don't know, I've been doing some VB.NET work in VS.NET lately, and I am feeling exceedingly unproductive without features like built-in refactoring, smart renaming, smarter code completion, and similar things that exist in Eclipse (and IntelliJ).
VS.NET may be the Holy Grail for GUI development, but for just plain old writing code, Eclipse is light-years ahead. I mean, VS.NET doesn't even add your import statements, and it won't code complete something if it's not in an import statement.
Yes, but perhaps one should examine the reasons for wanting operator overloading and multiple inheritance. If this is just so that the project is fully "buzzword-compliant", then perhaps the priority list should be tweaked a little.
I have found that being able to do multiple inheritance often leads to more confusion than help when doing software development.
A student taught in java may not know that an integer isnt necesarily represented with the same number of bits on every system. It is definately possible to become a good programmer no matter what language you start with (it all depends on the person), but starting with java is a diservice to students because it may result in their taking too many things for granted.
This is true - but, a couple of thoughts on that: I would argue that most (though certainly not all) programmers are either a) going to be using Java, VB, Perl, or some other higher-level language to write their code -or- b) going to be developing applications for one particular platform. In either case, the specifics of platform architectures are less relevant. And, in any case, I certainly did not learn those things in my intro CS class using C++. Those sort of things popped up later in more advanced classes, if at all.
java provides things that students wont find in other languages.
I would say that this is a good thing;-) With the (supposed) advent of.NET and the increased popularity of Java, programming is becoming less focused on bits, bytes, and pointers and more on higher-level concepts like design patterns and system architectures. Not that C/C++ will ever go away, I just think that they will become the more specialized case, and languages like Java and Visual Basic 7 and C# will become more dominant, just like assembly moved out of the way for C/C++.
One thing that needs to be mentioned here I think is that OOP vs. procedural programming is not necessarily a language feature, but a design feature. You can write a completely procedural application in Java (by having one huge class with many many methods) and you can at least come close to having an object-oriented program in C (using structs, function pointers, etc.)
Also, another common misperception about Java is that you can ignore things like memory. You *can* have memory leaks in Java, they just show up in different ways. I think that a lot of the arguments given here against Java can really be avoided by a dedicated teacher/professor who targets the class at Java - not one who reuses the C++ class and just changes the syntax. Things like hash maps are provided for you, but that doesn't mean that the professor can't make you write one from scratch anyway.
Java is just like any other language - use it well, and it performs well. But, also like any other language, it has its flaws. And those flaws can show up a lot more readily if you teach Java as though it were C++. Teach Java as its own language, and I think it's perfect for teaching.
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They already have those - http://www.vocera.com/products/products.shtm
I don't know, I've been doing some VB.NET work in VS.NET lately, and I am feeling exceedingly unproductive without features like built-in refactoring, smart renaming, smarter code completion, and similar things that exist in Eclipse (and IntelliJ).
VS.NET may be the Holy Grail for GUI development, but for just plain old writing code, Eclipse is light-years ahead. I mean, VS.NET doesn't even add your import statements, and it won't code complete something if it's not in an import statement.
Yes, but perhaps one should examine the reasons for wanting operator overloading and multiple inheritance. If this is just so that the project is fully "buzzword-compliant", then perhaps the priority list should be tweaked a little.
I have found that being able to do multiple inheritance often leads to more confusion than help when doing software development.
This is true - but, a couple of thoughts on that: I would argue that most (though certainly not all) programmers are either a) going to be using Java, VB, Perl, or some other higher-level language to write their code -or- b) going to be developing applications for one particular platform. In either case, the specifics of platform architectures are less relevant. And, in any case, I certainly did not learn those things in my intro CS class using C++. Those sort of things popped up later in more advanced classes, if at all.
java provides things that students wont find in other languages.
I would say that this is a good thing ;-) With the (supposed) advent of .NET and the increased popularity of Java, programming is becoming less focused on bits, bytes, and pointers and more on higher-level concepts like design patterns and system architectures. Not that C/C++ will ever go away, I just think that they will become the more specialized case, and languages like Java and Visual Basic 7 and C# will become more dominant, just like assembly moved out of the way for C/C++.
Also, another common misperception about Java is that you can ignore things like memory. You *can* have memory leaks in Java, they just show up in different ways. I think that a lot of the arguments given here against Java can really be avoided by a dedicated teacher/professor who targets the class at Java - not one who reuses the C++ class and just changes the syntax. Things like hash maps are provided for you, but that doesn't mean that the professor can't make you write one from scratch anyway.
Java is just like any other language - use it well, and it performs well. But, also like any other language, it has its flaws. And those flaws can show up a lot more readily if you teach Java as though it were C++. Teach Java as its own language, and I think it's perfect for teaching.