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You don't teach a kid to swim by starting in the deep end. There's a reason training wheels exist for learning to ride a bike. Same applies here. You need to un

You don't teach a kid to swim by starting in the deep end. There's a reason training wheels exist for learning to ride a bike. Same applies here. You need to understand what code even is before diving into the specifics of the compilation step. That said, I agree with the title but for different reasons. Eclipse is terrible compared to other available options (JetBrains is so vastly superior). I do agree that Java is a terrible first language to teach, it has so much arcane boilerplate to get through before doing anything useful. Especially the whole "public static void main(String[] args)" incantation you're taught up-front. So many meaningless words for a beginner. And yes I do agree "how to use your computer" type stuff should be covered at least after the first assignment, things like how to use a terminal and the filesystem as mentioned. And IMO git should never be taught CLI-first, it's way too hard to wrap your head around without the visual of the commit graph. GitKraken does it best, and is free for students.

selfhoster11 5y ago
> I do agree that Java is a terrible first language to teach, it has so much arcane boilerplate to get through before doing anything useful. Especially the whole "public static void main(String[] args)" incantation you're taught up-front. So many meaningless words for a beginner. The boilerplate is annoying, but it's an obstacle that can be overcome. My lecturer/lab tutor for introductory Java just gave us a pre-prepared: public class Main { } And told us to write all the code in between the two curly braces and don't worry about what's outside of them. The main method is another piece of boilerplate to ignore.
ldehaan 5y ago
Everyone I knew growing up learned to swim by getting tossed in the deep end. The kids who's parents babied them didn't go to the pool or have many friends. I'm sure those kids are all managers at fast food places or live off the dole now. Of course I'm a dad of 4, full time, so my viewpoint on kids is different from "parents" who feed their kids baby formula and hire babysitters and nannys instead of taking care of their kids themselves and so therefore have no idea how resilient humans are and how we can only achieve what we're led to believe is possible. If you're restricting your kids so much as to protect them from life, they'll only get hurt later, and usually those people have no idea how to deal, so they blame everyone around them for things they're responsible for, and we currently have so many of these kids, now adults, that they're passing laws to protect themselves later in life because they never had to face real adversity ever in their lives. Anyways. I disagree. A bunch.
- ldehaan 5y ago
  I went off on bad parenting because I think it goes hand in hand with bad teaching. But honestly after reading it I just think it's funny. I'm obviously dealing with other people's kids :D too much man, too much. Some people's children, ya feel me?

selfhoster11 5y ago

> I do agree that Java is a terrible first language to teach, it has so much arcane boilerplate to get through before doing anything useful. Especially the whole "public static void main(String[] args)" incantation you're taught up-front. So many meaningless words for a beginner. The boilerplate is annoying, but it's an obstacle that can be overcome. My lecturer/lab tutor for introductory Java just gave us a pre-prepared: public class Main { } And told us to write all the code in between the two curly braces and don't worry about what's outside of them. The main method is another piece of boilerplate to ignore.

ldehaan 5y ago

Everyone I knew growing up learned to swim by getting tossed in the deep end. The kids who's parents babied them didn't go to the pool or have many friends. I'm sure those kids are all managers at fast food places or live off the dole now. Of course I'm a dad of 4, full time, so my viewpoint on kids is different from "parents" who feed their kids baby formula and hire babysitters and nannys instead of taking care of their kids themselves and so therefore have no idea how resilient humans are and how we can only achieve what we're led to believe is possible. If you're restricting your kids so much as to protect them from life, they'll only get hurt later, and usually those people have no idea how to deal, so they blame everyone around them for things they're responsible for, and we currently have so many of these kids, now adults, that they're passing laws to protect themselves later in life because they never had to face real adversity ever in their lives. Anyways. I disagree. A bunch.

ldehaan 5y ago
I went off on bad parenting because I think it goes hand in hand with bad teaching. But honestly after reading it I just think it's funny. I'm obviously dealing with other people's kids :D too much man, too much. Some people's children, ya feel me?