Being a professional software developer who works in Java, and a former nightclass teacher of Java I can say without reservation that Java is NOT the best first language. Java forces you to use Object constructs from the get go. These things get in the way of communicating the principles that you want to teach.
My first "Introduction to Programming" course was given through Java and it transpired exactly as Hairy1 describes. We got tied up in knots with objects, constructors and parameters and a simple task of multiplying two integers took two weeks to teach because the lecturer wrapped the whole thing up in a pile of "class Rectangle" bullshit.
By contrast, at the same time, we were being introduced to assembly on a Motorola 68032, and one of the grad students had put together a simple wrapper program to let us write values to registers using simple pseudocode-like commands. I learned more about programming and problem-solving from THAT course than I ever did from the Java one.
More recently, a friend of mine taught a beginners' course for an evening CS course in the same college (Trinity College Dublin) and when he was casting around for a simple language that wouldn't get in the way of teaching basic programming principles but could still be used to create something more satisfying than command-line output, you know what he ended up going for? PHP. And apparently they loved it.
You can't start with objects; it's too abstract for a beginner. When you've done variable assignment, operator precedence, control structures, simple functions, scope, loops and arrays, THEN maybe think about introducing classes.
Not really; RTE and indeed the Irish government are in serious financial trouble (yes, worse than everyone else) and they're scrabbling for every cent they can get.
(Yes, I'm ignoring the leprechaun reference)
Sad but true. If I hadn't tied myself to a 35 year mortgage at the height of our property bubble (whyyyyy?), I'd have left by now.
Ireland was a backward little shithole until the nineties and now, after 10 years of nouveau-riche boomtime spending, like white trash winning the lottery, we've spent all the money, we've nothing to show for it and the bailiffs are knocking.
A bit worrying then that when the brothers W are discussing their influences in the Matrix Revisited DVD (highly recommended btw), they distinctly use the J word. At the end of the day, it's not really important what it's called or how it's catgorised, only if it's entertaining or not. I've just downloaded Animatrix 2; gotta get off this Sun and on to a PC with Quicktime now:-)
Re:Anyone remember a similar movie / animation...
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Java Powers of Ten
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· Score: 1
There was a Guinness TV ad in Ireland/UK a few years ago with a similar idea, where you zoom in on the Guinness, then into the bubbles which are little universes etc etc until you're back in front of the pint. They played Louis Armstrong's "We Have All The Time In The World" over it. Very touching.
How many people is this really a problem for, anyway? I can understand that college students don't necessarily have the advantage of cookies, but everyone else? I filled out a fake account, ONCE, and I never have to re-enter it here, unless of course I install a new browser (/me hugs Mozilla 1.0).
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought Romero left id to form Ion Storm long before Quake 3 (or even Quake 2) came out. Now, if we're going to slag off stupid storylines, there's more than enough ammunition to be found in Quake 1. An enemy known only as "Quake" who turns out to be a large blob of jelly or rather Shub-Niggurath, Queen of Nasty Slimy Things? Now *that* was comedy
The only reason we haven't had a hijacking since 9/11 is because the terrorists know that the passengers of any plane hijacked will gladly give their lives to get the plane out of the hands of the hijackers.
I never heard about any passengers springing into action when show-bomb guy was sitting there trying to blow them all up...
Someone even went to the trouble of translating the interface into a language with probably fewer native speakers than Klingon: Irish! Brilliant! My interface language of choice már is feidir liom. Now if only that someone would go the extra mile and do the About, Help etc pages as Gaeilge...
Seriously, even a degree in French Poetry + your experience can keep you gainfully employed
Ain't that the truth. A friend of mine recently secured a programming job at a random large IT firm here in Germany. Her computing/programming experience: next to none; her degree: biology at MIT. They have given her a few months to learn Java and HTML herself before they take her on and she's become a hermit in the meantime trying to become a level 1 geek by reading SAMS books. She'll probably pull it off too, in fairness to her. Doesn't stop other people like my unemployed mate with the 4 year CS degree from Nottingham (real-time processing or something) from hating her though...
Me, I'm a cunning linguist working part-time as a technical translator before going back to finish my degree next year. I reckon I'm unlikely to ever have to be much of a programmer as long as I know what words like Benutzeroberfläche and Unternehmensorganisation mean. I hope...
Funny how some "hot" controversies seem to slip under the carpet over time. The American NSA is *still* intercepting *my* mail; that alone should be reason for every EU government to boycott American software. Lets hear it for Bundestux, soon to be followed by Commonstux, Parlementtux, Congresotux, Oireachtux etc...:-)
Now, along comes Sega's Game Gear a few years later. Think Portable Genesis.
Portable Master System really - the Game Gear was 8-bit. It does illustrate the point about hi-tech v. practicality though: The Game Gear had a 16 colour backlit LCD screen that was as blurry as fuck when playing Sega's flagship game, namely Sonic. 6 (or was it 8?) AA batteries barely lasted 2 hours and yes, it was way too expensive.
But the real tragedy was the Atari Lynx, the 16-bit handheld (GB Advance is 32-bit, btw) as powerful as a Genesis/Megadrive that fell by the wayside because of crap games. Ditto the Jaguar, the most powerful console for years until the Nintendo 64. And don't even start me on the Amiga CD32...
Not only is the SuperNES missing, but they screwed up the details on several other consoles too. Atari's Jaguar was 64-bit, the PSX 1 was/is 32-bit and the Dreamcast was/is 128-bit. I also have a suspicion that the Neo-Geo was 32-bit but I can't check this up 'cos the SNK website is, er, "down":-)
And while we're on this, why don't the Commodores, Speccies, Amstrads and indeed Atari (ST) get mentioned as far as games go? I guess that accounts for the gap between the TMRC stories on one page followed immediately by DOOM on the next. Those little "home computers" were where the technological barriers were broken for years. In the UK and Ireland anyway... Consoles?! Ha!
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Being a professional software developer who works in Java, and a former nightclass teacher of Java I can say without reservation that Java is NOT the best first language. Java forces you to use Object constructs from the get go. These things get in the way of communicating the principles that you want to teach.
My first "Introduction to Programming" course was given through Java and it transpired exactly as Hairy1 describes. We got tied up in knots with objects, constructors and parameters and a simple task of multiplying two integers took two weeks to teach because the lecturer wrapped the whole thing up in a pile of "class Rectangle" bullshit.
By contrast, at the same time, we were being introduced to assembly on a Motorola 68032, and one of the grad students had put together a simple wrapper program to let us write values to registers using simple pseudocode-like commands. I learned more about programming and problem-solving from THAT course than I ever did from the Java one.
More recently, a friend of mine taught a beginners' course for an evening CS course in the same college (Trinity College Dublin) and when he was casting around for a simple language that wouldn't get in the way of teaching basic programming principles but could still be used to create something more satisfying than command-line output, you know what he ended up going for? PHP. And apparently they loved it.
You can't start with objects; it's too abstract for a beginner. When you've done variable assignment, operator precedence, control structures, simple functions, scope, loops and arrays, THEN maybe think about introducing classes.
Not really; RTE and indeed the Irish government are in serious financial trouble (yes, worse than everyone else) and they're scrabbling for every cent they can get. (Yes, I'm ignoring the leprechaun reference)
Sad but true. If I hadn't tied myself to a 35 year mortgage at the height of our property bubble (whyyyyy?), I'd have left by now.
Ireland was a backward little shithole until the nineties and now, after 10 years of nouveau-riche boomtime spending, like white trash winning the lottery, we've spent all the money, we've nothing to show for it and the bailiffs are knocking.
Imagine "Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells" as a redneck and you'll get an insight into the mentality of a sizeable portion of the Australian electorate.
Random point of information: Australia's equivalent of the RIAA just jumbles the letters around a bit to make ARIA.
I'm surprised that the author used the term "paddywagon", which I understood to be an american term particularly offensive to an irishman.
I think he was just taking the Mick. Or maybe he was just drunk, bejaysis.
Gwan da Steff!
we speak "British English" everywhere in Ireland, not just the north...
The hell we do! I may well write the Queen's English, but the spoken dialect is a whole different kettle of fish.
No need. register.passport.net seems to be completely down at the moment; I guess MS copped on.
A bit worrying then that when the brothers W are discussing their influences in the Matrix Revisited DVD (highly recommended btw), they distinctly use the J word. At the end of the day, it's not really important what it's called or how it's catgorised, only if it's entertaining or not. I've just downloaded Animatrix 2; gotta get off this Sun and on to a PC with Quicktime now :-)
There was a Guinness TV ad in Ireland/UK a few years ago with a similar idea, where you zoom in on the Guinness, then into the bubbles which are little universes etc etc until you're back in front of the pint. They played Louis Armstrong's "We Have All The Time In The World" over it. Very touching.
neither NSA nor Echelon officially exist...
Uh, not only does the NSA exist, it even has a website, complete with slightly worrying kids' section.
Just use the Random NY Times Registration Generator.
How many people is this really a problem for, anyway? I can understand that college students don't necessarily have the advantage of cookies, but everyone else? I filled out a fake account, ONCE, and I never have to re-enter it here, unless of course I install a new browser (/me hugs Mozilla 1.0).
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought Romero left id to form Ion Storm long before Quake 3 (or even Quake 2) came out. Now, if we're going to slag off stupid storylines, there's more than enough ammunition to be found in Quake 1. An enemy known only as "Quake" who turns out to be a large blob of jelly or rather Shub-Niggurath, Queen of Nasty Slimy Things? Now *that* was comedy
The only reason we haven't had a hijacking since 9/11 is because the terrorists know that the passengers of any plane hijacked will gladly give their lives to get the plane out of the hands of the hijackers.
I never heard about any passengers springing into action when show-bomb guy was sitting there trying to blow them all up...
Someone even went to the trouble of translating the interface into a language with probably fewer native speakers than Klingon: Irish! Brilliant! My interface language of choice már is feidir liom. Now if only that someone would go the extra mile and do the About, Help etc pages as Gaeilge...
There was something before ATRAC? What was it used for, if not the MiniDisc (which Sony invented)? Seriously, I'd love to see a link or something...
I see no BUSINESS basis for this suit
Well, they are $450,000 better off...not that I am suggesting that this was in any way fiscally motivated. Of course not; that'd be ridiculous.
What scares me is how I even found myself double-checking the previous paragraph there, lest I be sued :-(
Seriously, even a degree in French Poetry + your experience can keep you gainfully employed
Ain't that the truth. A friend of mine recently secured a programming job at a random large IT firm here in Germany. Her computing/programming experience: next to none; her degree: biology at MIT. They have given her a few months to learn Java and HTML herself before they take her on and she's become a hermit in the meantime trying to become a level 1 geek by reading SAMS books. She'll probably pull it off too, in fairness to her. Doesn't stop other people like my unemployed mate with the 4 year CS degree from Nottingham (real-time processing or something) from hating her though...
Me, I'm a cunning linguist working part-time as a technical translator before going back to finish my degree next year. I reckon I'm unlikely to ever have to be much of a programmer as long as I know what words like Benutzeroberfläche and Unternehmensorganisation mean. I hope...
Taco's Belle.
Monkey = Affe, Äffin; Boy = Junge, Knabe.
Therefore, I humbly suggest that, upon being introduced to Mr. Ballmer, you utter the words: "Lech mich, Affeknabe"...
Funny how some "hot" controversies seem to slip under the carpet over time. The American NSA is *still* intercepting *my* mail; that alone should be reason for every EU government to boycott American software. Lets hear it for Bundestux, soon to be followed by Commonstux, Parlementtux, Congresotux, Oireachtux etc... :-)
Nice translation (mod up!); must have taken a while to do, too.
You're German, right? Just curious...
or Fark or even my site...
Yes, I'm a hit-counter whore :P
Now, along comes Sega's Game Gear a few years later. Think Portable Genesis.
Portable Master System really - the Game Gear was 8-bit. It does illustrate the point about hi-tech v. practicality though: The Game Gear had a 16 colour backlit LCD screen that was as blurry as fuck when playing Sega's flagship game, namely Sonic. 6 (or was it 8?) AA batteries barely lasted 2 hours and yes, it was way too expensive.
But the real tragedy was the Atari Lynx, the 16-bit handheld (GB Advance is 32-bit, btw) as powerful as a Genesis/Megadrive that fell by the wayside because of crap games. Ditto the Jaguar, the most powerful console for years until the Nintendo 64. And don't even start me on the Amiga CD32...
Not only is the SuperNES missing, but they screwed up the details on several other consoles too. Atari's Jaguar was 64-bit, the PSX 1 was/is 32-bit and the Dreamcast was/is 128-bit. I also have a suspicion that the Neo-Geo was 32-bit but I can't check this up 'cos the SNK website is, er, "down" :-)
And while we're on this, why don't the Commodores, Speccies, Amstrads and indeed Atari (ST) get mentioned as far as games go? I guess that accounts for the gap between the TMRC stories on one page followed immediately by DOOM on the next. Those little "home computers" were where the technological barriers were broken for years. In the UK and Ireland anyway... Consoles?! Ha!