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Is this really what students struggle with? I think it is important to be able to determine the root cause of a problem first. Do students find difficult to w

Is this really what students struggle with? I think it is important to be able to determine the root cause of a problem first. Do students find difficult to write "public static void main(String[] args)" or do they find difficulty understanding the concepts of a public method, a static method, a void method? Perhaps then we should focus on teaching these concepts, which are essential to java, first, instead of undermining the core of the language and the platform. Neither "goals" nor "summary" can explain away why this can solve the problem this JEP purports to solve. This is my opinion, of course.

pron 3y ago
> Perhaps then we should focus on teaching these concepts, which are essential to java, first. As the JEP explains, this change does make the concepts of classes and access modifiers easier to teach by allowing the teacher to postpone their introduction to a point in time when they're actually useful and can be understood. Access control, static, and class declarations are only meaningful once you have other classes and/or objects interacting with your code. We don't want to force teachers to teach programming in the large early because many of them told us they don't do that anyway. > instead of undermining the core of the language and the platform The syntax and concepts of anonymous classes are unchanged. Providing an unnamed class, implicitly, when a class isn't needed is consistent with how we already provide an unnamed package and an unnamed module implicitly when they're not needed.
pgwhalen 3y ago
It sounds like you haven't taught or taken an intro to programming course using Java before. In that situation, instructors might spend weeks trying to get their students to understand variables or control flow concepts. Visibility may be a core concern for you, as a (presumably) professional Java programmer, but it's not at all to programming novices.
- java-man 3y ago
  This particular problem, in my opinion, has a much simpler solution: a special educational environment. A sort of mini-IDE where two things happen: 1. code written by a student gets inserted into a top-level class's main() method (has to be smart enough to deal with imports, inner classes etc.) 2. the top level class might declar certain utility functions such as print() instead of System.out.println(), and possibly others. Bingo. No need to mess with something that works just fine for 99.99% of the professional users. edit, in response to @crummy (as we reached the maximum depth it seems): Some people commented that it might be beneficial to delay introduction of more complex concepts until the basic ones are digested. So hiding the class/main method would help with that (similar to jshell, I might add). And keep in mid this is an IDE and not java-lite.
  - crummy 3y ago
    In your other comment you said: > What I really dislike about this JEP is not only that it tries to solve the educational problem in a worst possible manner (my opinion), but it also risks creating a generation of students who don't really understand the fundamental concepts that allow us to write reliable code. How would your special IDE/forked Java-lite prevent creating a generation of students who don't really understand the fundamental concepts that allow us to write reliable code?
  - djur 3y ago
    Such an environment already exists, and the JEP rejects it as an option: > Evolving a batch of working declarations in JShell into a real Java program leads to a non-idiomatic style of code because it declares each method, class, and variable as static... it is not the on-ramp programming model we are looking for.
  - pgwhalen 3y ago
    Even as you outline your “simple” solution, you acknowledge in parentheses all of its hidden complexities. As Brian Goetz would say, this is a classic “why not just” take.
OkayPhysicist 3y ago
The problem is when you sit down to teach the beginner, all the boilerplate clutter forces you to either A) teach them the magic incantation to be unquestionably written before they start writing any code, or B) you explain everything before getting into any real programming. Both suck. In the first case, students are torn away from the mode of thinking that programming thrives in: that everything is made up of simple, understandable pieces, that can be built up into complex solutions. It ends up serving as a trap for the very kind of inquisitive student that is equipped to succeed in programming. In the second case, everyone's bored to tears, and you can be assured that your entire class will be hopelessly lost before they write their first line of code. It's a bad time all around. Basically, programming wants to be built up with the following concepts, in order: 1. Algorithmic Thinking (solutions can be representing as a series of simple steps) 2. Structured Syntax (these steps can be represented as structured text) 3. Symbolic Reasoning (types, variables, arrays) 4. Control Flow (loops, conditionals) 5. Functions 6. Higher Structures (classes, objects, etc) Python, IMO, is pretty good pedagogical tool in this regard print("Hello World") "We want our computer to display to us (or 'print' in software terms) the phrase 'Hello World'. Python provides us with a built-in way to do so: the "print" function. In the majority of programming languages, we express a call to a function as a command, followed by its inputs (or 'arguments') contained within parentheses. As our one and only argument, we provide what we want printed, in this case the text "Hello World". By wrapping this text in quotes, we can tell the language that we intend this text to be interpreted as a chunk of literal text, called a 'String' rather than as a variable or other symbol for the language." In contrast, explaining everything going on in the equivalent Java public class MyFirstClass { public static void main(String[] args){ System.out.println("Hello World"); } } would take more text than I'm willing to hammer into a HN comment, but to be explained to a complete beginner would likely involve skipping, but promising to explain later: classes, functions, "public", "static", "void", command line arguments, and the uniquely weird "System.out", followed by a similar explanation to the Python example, with the added "we end each step with a semicolon".
- java-man 3y ago
  Thank you for a detailed explanation! Please see my response to @pgwhalen. In short, the problem has, I think, a much simpler solution. What I really dislike about this JEP is not only that it tries to solve the educational problem in a worst possible manner (my opinion), but it also risks creating a generation of students who don't really understand the fundamental concepts that allow us to write reliable code. Perhaps we need to start teaching basic programming with BASIC instead, and graduate to a more complicated platform once the basic concepts have been understood.

pron 3y ago

> Perhaps then we should focus on teaching these concepts, which are essential to java, first. As the JEP explains, this change does make the concepts of classes and access modifiers easier to teach by allowing the teacher to postpone their introduction to a point in time when they're actually useful and can be understood. Access control, static, and class declarations are only meaningful once you have other classes and/or objects interacting with your code. We don't want to force teachers to teach programming in the large early because many of them told us they don't do that anyway. > instead of undermining the core of the language and the platform The syntax and concepts of anonymous classes are unchanged. Providing an unnamed class, implicitly, when a class isn't needed is consistent with how we already provide an unnamed package and an unnamed module implicitly when they're not needed.

pgwhalen 3y ago

It sounds like you haven't taught or taken an intro to programming course using Java before. In that situation, instructors might spend weeks trying to get their students to understand variables or control flow concepts. Visibility may be a core concern for you, as a (presumably) professional Java programmer, but it's not at all to programming novices.

java-man 3y ago
This particular problem, in my opinion, has a much simpler solution: a special educational environment. A sort of mini-IDE where two things happen: 1. code written by a student gets inserted into a top-level class's main() method (has to be smart enough to deal with imports, inner classes etc.) 2. the top level class might declar certain utility functions such as print() instead of System.out.println(), and possibly others. Bingo. No need to mess with something that works just fine for 99.99% of the professional users. edit, in response to @crummy (as we reached the maximum depth it seems): Some people commented that it might be beneficial to delay introduction of more complex concepts until the basic ones are digested. So hiding the class/main method would help with that (similar to jshell, I might add). And keep in mid this is an IDE and not java-lite.
- crummy 3y ago
  In your other comment you said: > What I really dislike about this JEP is not only that it tries to solve the educational problem in a worst possible manner (my opinion), but it also risks creating a generation of students who don't really understand the fundamental concepts that allow us to write reliable code. How would your special IDE/forked Java-lite prevent creating a generation of students who don't really understand the fundamental concepts that allow us to write reliable code?
- djur 3y ago
  Such an environment already exists, and the JEP rejects it as an option: > Evolving a batch of working declarations in JShell into a real Java program leads to a non-idiomatic style of code because it declares each method, class, and variable as static... it is not the on-ramp programming model we are looking for.
- pgwhalen 3y ago
  Even as you outline your “simple” solution, you acknowledge in parentheses all of its hidden complexities. As Brian Goetz would say, this is a classic “why not just” take.

OkayPhysicist 3y ago

The problem is when you sit down to teach the beginner, all the boilerplate clutter forces you to either A) teach them the magic incantation to be unquestionably written before they start writing any code, or B) you explain everything before getting into any real programming. Both suck. In the first case, students are torn away from the mode of thinking that programming thrives in: that everything is made up of simple, understandable pieces, that can be built up into complex solutions. It ends up serving as a trap for the very kind of inquisitive student that is equipped to succeed in programming. In the second case, everyone's bored to tears, and you can be assured that your entire class will be hopelessly lost before they write their first line of code. It's a bad time all around. Basically, programming wants to be built up with the following concepts, in order: 1. Algorithmic Thinking (solutions can be representing as a series of simple steps) 2. Structured Syntax (these steps can be represented as structured text) 3. Symbolic Reasoning (types, variables, arrays) 4. Control Flow (loops, conditionals) 5. Functions 6. Higher Structures (classes, objects, etc) Python, IMO, is pretty good pedagogical tool in this regard print("Hello World") "We want our computer to display to us (or 'print' in software terms) the phrase 'Hello World'. Python provides us with a built-in way to do so: the "print" function. In the majority of programming languages, we express a call to a function as a command, followed by its inputs (or 'arguments') contained within parentheses. As our one and only argument, we provide what we want printed, in this case the text "Hello World". By wrapping this text in quotes, we can tell the language that we intend this text to be interpreted as a chunk of literal text, called a 'String' rather than as a variable or other symbol for the language." In contrast, explaining everything going on in the equivalent Java public class MyFirstClass { public static void main(String[] args){ System.out.println("Hello World"); } } would take more text than I'm willing to hammer into a HN comment, but to be explained to a complete beginner would likely involve skipping, but promising to explain later: classes, functions, "public", "static", "void", command line arguments, and the uniquely weird "System.out", followed by a similar explanation to the Python example, with the added "we end each step with a semicolon".

java-man 3y ago
Thank you for a detailed explanation! Please see my response to @pgwhalen. In short, the problem has, I think, a much simpler solution. What I really dislike about this JEP is not only that it tries to solve the educational problem in a worst possible manner (my opinion), but it also risks creating a generation of students who don't really understand the fundamental concepts that allow us to write reliable code. Perhaps we need to start teaching basic programming with BASIC instead, and graduate to a more complicated platform once the basic concepts have been understood.