Should Students Be Taught With or Without an IDE? 848
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?
I would say IDEs (Score:2, Insightful)
I would let the students chose... Ofcourse, you might have to teach them how to create a project with an IDE, too.. [instead of just supplying the make files].
Go with what they are familiar with. (Score:2, Insightful)
Without (Score:5, Insightful)
I generally prefer without. My intro CS course (in Java) five years ago was taught using emacs (which I actually didn't like at the time), and part of the beginning of the course was graded on knowing emacs shortcuts. A later course that I was a TA for used BlueJay, and again grading was done dependent on using that IDE.
I am more a fan of letting students choose their own environment. I've been using UltraEdit for a long long time, and I'm very happy with it. My suggestion would be to give students a list of good editor options, but not require them to use any single one. Maybe a later lesson could focus on the debugging potential of one IDE or another (I hate to say it, but Microsoft has some great debuggers). My experience, though, is that the main issue for students is what they're writing, not how they write it.
Re:I would say IDEs (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
similarly, as long as they can debug in the IDE, they'll never learn real debugging techniques that the "cold metal", or even just debugging a running server they can't get an IDE into.
They should learn to program as close to the raw as possible. notepad, command line, debugging through prints.
They should learn software development separately, with an IDE, with integrated debugging and complex build systems. Learning to program, and learning to be a good software developer are two separate things.
With. (Score:2, Insightful)
Why bother? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I would say IDEs (Score:2, Insightful)
I think to survive programming in the industry you need to know how to function with the IDE for larger shops with detailed processes and for smaller teams or environments where none would exist. Now that said, I think even the smallest of development requires some type of version control by a repository it should be something everyone knows how to do. That said, I wouldn't expect anybody trained in programming to come right out of school knowing how to implement a development process integrated with version control, QA, and software builds. But you should have some understanding how this all impacts your day to day work.
Oh and FYI if you look at doing this with Visual Studio 2005 and Team Foundation, you should introduce your students to defect tracking and QA processes to because it's all integrated there. Anyways, just my 2 cents.
what do you really want to teach? (Score:5, Insightful)
- what do you want to spend your time teaching? Every class minute you spend teaching vi or emacs is a minute you're not teaching the programming. Every assignment you assign to practice vi and emacs is an assignment that can't focus as much on the programming
- what does the college expect someone who passes your class to know? Are they expected to know how to use an IDE for the class that has yours as a pre-req?
- which gives more value to your students? while learning an archaic text editor might be handy, learning to make the most of an IDE might serve them better - knowing how to set breakpoints, watches, stepping through code, etc.
I would suggest you pick the method that will let your students spend more time and energy learning to write good code -- and let them use the system that serves them best.
I say no IDE (Score:3, Insightful)
The course is taught using an IDE which did make it easier for most of the students, but as a result no body even knew javac existed.. as far as they were concerned they clicked a button and it magicaly was compiled.. while some would call this good decoupling, what it showed for me is that people ended up completly ignorant of the underlying implementation... they dont know what the command line options are for the compiler or VM, or that javadoc or jar exist (or the related concepts). It left me playing tech support in class so much that I had to do all my actual coding at home.
This point would be even more important in the case of python given that it can run as an interactive interpreted language and all (I haven't atually finished learning python yet).
The point is that learning without an IDE gives the student better background on how the language works. If you use an editor with syntax higlighting then other than some ease of use there is no real advantage to the IDE.
You mention emacs and vi.. if you are running under a POSIX enviornment then you should really teach without an IDE because it better teaches the principles of the UNIX system ideal (small programs with one purpose). Even if you run Windows it wouldn't hurt the students (and future programmers) to be introduced to the UNIX way of doing things.
hope that helps.
Teach them without computers (Score:5, Insightful)
Teach them without computers.
No, seriously.
If you really want to teach programming (instead of teaching "using a computer"), start them out on paper and make them actually think about what they're trying to do instead of getting caught up in using the interface. Then have them work in groups using a whiteboard, and don't let them test their code until they've all agreed that it's correct. Teach them to look out for their own mistakes, and the mistakes of others, rather than counting on the computer to do their thinking for them.
There was a definite advantage to the old submit-a-deck-of-cards system, in that mistakes were annoying and you worked hard to avoid them. To do this, you had to really think about what you were trying to accomplish, how you planed to do it, and what might go wrong. In other words, you were really learning to program.
On the other hand, with highly interactive environments (which are extremely useful once you know what you are doing) beginners are all to tempted to fall into a trial and error loop until they get something that "works"--which is to say, it happens to produce reasonable results for whatever limited test case they are using--without ever really thinking about the program.
Suppose you were teaching flying. Would you start your students out in an advanced aircraft with an autopilot that could take off and land unassisted, and all sorts of doodads to make flying easy--or would you sit them down with a pad of paper and make them work out things like stall speed and fuel requirement problems until they really understood the issues?
-- MarkusQ
yes and no (Score:3, Insightful)
My first course in programming was at UMass Boston, which is basically a community college, and we started off learning emacs, then went on to our first cup of java.
It was pretty gruelling.
But now I still know emacs and use it every day, while the java technology (1.0) has changed a great deal.
My point is that if you're going to teach them a tool, use one that will still be useful and helpful later on in their academic and professional careers. Visual Studio may not even be around in 5 years, but most likely, it'll still be around and will use a different interface that they'll have to relearn. Instead, focus on the fundamentals of any IDE, such as compiling, linking, testing, debugging, so that they'll have no problem learning whatever IDE their company uses. In this sense, I think it makes more sense to learn that to compile a program into bytecode or machine code, you have to launch another program that does this (gcc program.c or javac Program.java) rather than just click a Run button and have everything magically happen for you.
This goes along with teaching the fundamentals of programming languages and operating systems rather than preparing them to work in a single specific language or OS and have them out of work in 10 years.
Re:what do you really want to teach? (Score:3, Insightful)
If you think "Hello, world" demands an IDE... (Score:2, Insightful)
IDEs are insanely useful when working on large projects, and should be introduced towards the end of the class, but IMHO if you use an IDE from the start you're going to end up with a bunch of students who understand the IDE instead of the core concepts they need to know.
Re:... Yes and no (Score:5, Insightful)
I taught college level math (trig through intro to calculus) back in the '80s and the same debate raged with regard to using calculators. If I was teaching arithemtic, I would argue against using calculators since the whole idea is the class is supposed to be about learning simple skills like add, subtract, multiply and divide. If I'm teaching a higher level subject like trig or calculus, I'd say using calculators is great because it allows the students to concentrate on the concepts and not get bogged down in the arithmetic. Hell, when I was working on my MS I used an IBM 5100 running APL to do a bunch of the matrix manipulations for my abstract algebra class and the prof thought it was great since I wasn't spending hours row reducing matrices to get eigenvectors and eigenvalues.
I would argue that the same principle applies here. Higher level classes should encourage the students to use an IDE and higher level languages since the idea is to teach them concepts like data structures, complexity theory, numerical algorithms, etc. Introductory classes really benefit from having the students flail at things like compiler errors and trivial logic errors that a good IDE flags so they understand how little a computer can do until someone programs it. In between, the students need to be exposed to an IDE in a way that makes the transition itself a learning experience and ties in with software engineering, tools and the whole mess that Fred Brooks charaterized as accident vs. essence.
I'd also like to see a class that has students solve a problem using a programming language that's appropriate for the task and one that isn't (e.g., COBOL for a CGI problem) just so they also get some understanding of how using the right tool for the job makes a difference and the problem domain for a given tool is limited. This is probably beyond the scope of the original question.
Cheers,
Dave
Why hate MS? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why hate Microsoft? They should have some great debuggers - they're in the business of writing tens of thousands of lines of source per day, some of which isn't going to be perfect. They've got the knowledge and expertise, and most of the people working there are a lot like you and I, it's just that their business ideology is to mostly focus on the desktop market, and Windows etc reflects an operating system for a normal person to use.
You can also thank them for making an awesome IDE.
Re:I would say IDEs (Score:2, Insightful)
i want people who know how to program, for whom the IDE is a tool to make their accurate and creative thought process real. instead, i get people who don't know shit and let the IDE do all the thinking for them.
the IDE is a great tool for software development. for learning to program, it creates a handicapp that never goes away.
now if you really want any respect for your own opinion, sign your fucking name to it.
Re:Teach them without computers (Score:3, Insightful)
Your analogy is also wrong: you can experiment with software as much as you wish as the chances of breaking anything are slim (unless you are developing an embedded operating system and accidentally erase a firmware which cannot be easily replaced or something), but if you try to fly an aircraft all by yourself and crash, the craft is lost, and probably so is your life.
Great way to kill any interest in your course (Score:5, Insightful)
One of the most important things when you are starting out (and, actually, when you are experienced as well, but that's less obvious) is to get feedback on what you are doing wrong as quickly as possible. Don't throw this away lightly.
It's quite easy for students to work very long and hard doing something _completely and utterly wrong._ This does _not_ make them better programmers than if they got immediate feedback on what was wrong; it just frustrates them.
(I spent over a year teaching 100-300 level CS classes, and we actually started with paper-based flowcharting in one intro class, so I'm not speaking hypothetically here.)
--
Carnage Blender [carnageblender.com]: Meet interesting people. Kill them.
Re:Go with what they are familiar with. (Score:3, Insightful)
I would suggest the oppsite. Go with something new. If they have already seen various IDE's in the past then go with a stright text editor. The worst you could possibly do for a student is lead them to believe there is only one way. There is nothing like the experience of being confronted with that blank screen, it builds competence.
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
At least teach them how to use a debugger (Score:3, Insightful)
You'll give your students an lesson in frustration if you wait until later to teach them how to debug their programs.
I recently took a college course on C, and I was one of the few students who knew how to use a debugger (which wasn't taught in the course). Most of the other students had a really hard time with the course because they were basically expected to get their programs right the first time.
So I'd say teach the students how to use a debugger from the beginning. Unless you intend the course to be one that "weeds out" any student who isn't 100% dedicated to earning a CS degree...
Re:Not at first (Score:4, Insightful)
I would agree with this. I think you can't be a professional programmer without knowing what goes on under the hood. On the other hand, you can't be a professional programmer in a language like Java without mastering one of the better IDEs.
Modern IDEs like Eclipse and IntelliJ IDEA, by making it easy to follow the relationships and jump around the code, permit a more modular, granular style of development than you get using a text editor and opening up one file at a time. And these days I won't even hire somebody who doesn't know and use the automated refactoring tools if their language supports them.
Of course, I also won't hire somebody who can't write reasonably correct code on paper. So yes, do both!
Anti-IDE snobbery... (Score:3, Insightful)
It seems to me that there are two purposes to CS classes: theory and skills aquisition. You'll get plenty of the theory of computer science in your algorithms/data structures/whatever classes. For the CS101s of the world, if you get out of the class without being able to produce a simple program in the language you were using, thats a failure. In the real world, you will probably end up using an IDE, because its a tool which increases your productivity by an order of magnitude and makes managing the complexity of non-trivial programming assignments *possible*. When you've got three classes and two of them were provided by the instructor, sure, Notepad will work for you. When you get to your job and are tasked with adding a simple feature to one file which calls functions from 45 classes, then you'd best have an IDE or a lot of time on your hands to waste. Things like autocomplete, syntax checking (we all make typos or have brain farts, having a little squiggle beneath "if (x = 0)" or "if (!x.contains(y)) x.add(y);y.addContainer(x));" as soon as you type it can save minutes or hours of lost productivity), and integrated debuggers (I use and love print statements, but when you're trying to figure out why a hash function is failing for *one* input halfway through a list of ten-thousand a debugger is worth its weight in gold) are all tools that engineers should be introduced to as soon as possible.
Re:Go for the IDE (Score:2, Insightful)
The same goes for copying down what's written on the board in maths lectures, compared to reading through the notes. One way forces you to take longer over each point, giving you time to completely digest what is happening rather than saying 'i understand that' and moving on.
Re:Teach them without computers (Score:5, Insightful)
I used to do this in high-school, though. I would write applications down in a notebook one line at a time, then type them all in when I got to my calculator. It could be valuable, but there were many programs that had to be scrapped and re-written because there was an error somewhere in the code and it was impossible to figure out where the problem had arisen.
A tight success / failure loop does help teach people to seek out and find problem areas quickly and painlessly, before more and more code gets committed on top of the bugs, burying them in layers if misdirection.
Suppose you were teaching flying. Would you start your students out in an advanced aircraft with an autopilot that could take off and land unassisted, and all sorts of doodads to make flying easy--or would you sit them down with a pad of paper and make them work out things like stall speed and fuel requirement problems until they really understood the issues?
I'd drop them in front of MS flight simulator so that they would get a feel for what they were going to do. "The maths" generally don't teach a pilot how to recover from a downdraft.
Re:Go for the IDE (Score:3, Insightful)
What planet are you from?
My teachers probably would have given an extra 5 points for papers that had been typed. That way, they wouldn't have to read boys' illegible chicken scratch.
We probably all think "But the word processor helps EVERYONE to write better, thus improving the writing capabilities of humanity as a whole!"
I'm pretty sure that write better is poor grammar, but don't hold me to it.
What the text editor does is allow you to easily rewrite what turns out to be poor phrases or malformed thoughts. Of course, you've got to give a rat's ass, and not be destroyed by IM-speak.
ed, em, en, ex, vi (Was: Re:Which came first?) (Score:3, Insightful)
That would be Bill Joy, originally. Back then (~1976), he probably used ex, which was an extended rewrite of en, itself an improvement on em by George Coulouris. Em was Editor for Mortals, since only immortals could use ed. I've used ed. The horror! The horror! 8^)
All the programs from ed to ex were line editors. Vi contained ex, but also was a screen editor using termcap.
(For details, see Bill Joy's greatest gift to man - the vi editor [theregister.co.uk] and Interview with Bill Joy [pdx.edu].)
Re:Teach them without computers (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I would say IDEs (Score:5, Insightful)
Now I remember why I hated programming.
I'm going to disagree with the parent and say IDEs. Although I think his point about software development and programming being two separate things has merit.
They should - although you shouldn't assume - have already been taught how to programme. Are they're going to use an IDE when they leave college? You are supposed to be training them for the work place.
First and foremost - teach them good practice, tight simple modules with good comments.
Introduce them to an IDE, show them a couple if you've got time. Assign them tasks using the IDE. Go through the source code line by line. (starting at the end?) Write some really crappy code and get them to fix it using the IDE. Chuck out the IDE and get them to fix more crappy code using whatever masochistic tool you like. Have them debug each others work.
What I'm saying is try to replicate your experiences of the real world as much as possible. Just because IDEs weren't available when a lot of us were being taught doesn't mean we have to perpetuate a crappy situation.
Teach them to be efficient and fast - show them how to use what's available to them so they're not reinventing the wheel.
Ok, now that I've written efficient, we're going to have people argue that IDEs don't produce efficient code. One word... Java?
Ronan
Re:I would say IDEs (Score:4, Insightful)
love,
Anonymous Coward.
Re:Teach them without computers (Score:4, Insightful)
parent: On the other hand, with highly interactive environments (which are extremely useful once you know what you are doing) beginners are all to tempted to fall into a trial and error loop until they get something that "works"--which is to say, it happens to produce reasonable results for whatever limited test case they are using--without ever really thinking about the program.
I concur, the trial and error method of "write a line of code, try to compile it, fix the compiler error, repeat until program runs, then test an input, if it's wrong make a change, recompile, test an input... etc" isn't really learning how to program (and at worst it's only teaching how to choose good tests). I mean it's kind of like the slowest most terrible implementation of evolutionary programming (highschoolers get a head start, google Lawrence J. Fogel) or a slightly better optimized "one million monkeys" scenario. Maybe it is learning how to program, but it isn't really learning how to be a programmer. Maybe that's a distinction worth discussing.
Not that I'm especially qualified, but this is how I'd teach a programming course: Present the concept, explain the concept, train the concept (this is all face time, auditory, visual learning); assign reading and homework on the concept, test/quiz the concept (student opportunity to take ownership and get special attention, hands-on learning); assign implementation of the concept and then grade the implementation (hands-on practice); repeat until finals week. Homework over short breaks m-w, w-f and t-r with imlementation over long breaks r-t, and f-m assuming two and three per week meetings. Kids love weekends in the lab! (Do they even program in the lab anymore?)
Whether or not the implementation phase involves an IDE or just a text editor shouldn't really have a huge impact on the students' understanding unless one has to spend time teaching the environment -- taking away time that students need spent on teaching and learning the concept.
Re:... Yes and no (Score:3, Insightful)
With IDEs, the same applies. The student should be taught how to do things manually before being introduced to the tool which will do all the "behind the scenes" work for them.
Re:I say no IDE (Score:3, Insightful)
javac, javadoc, and jar are fundamental tools of java programming. Understanding execve() and assembly programming are not. Using javac is the minimum you need to program java in any environment. It is in fact all you need, unless you want additional tools. An IDE is nice to have, if you're into that kind of thing, but it is far from a requirement for java development. A student who has learned the IDE and not the fundamental tools has been done a disservice by a poor teacher.
Re:In related questions... (Score:3, Insightful)
Nothing. If you know what the IDE is doing. Similarly, you gain nothing by doing a multiplication by hand if you have a calculator ready and you know what you are doing. If you have never learnt to do the thing by hand, you introduce a factor of "magic" in the process. Like, you do this, you do this, and then something happens and you have the result. The teacher probably has explained what is the magic doing. But the likelyhood of you remembering is small. What's the use of remembering it if it's always done by magic?
I can see that in many programmers, both young and old. They program by some magic recipes, and the moment something fails, they don't know how the basic structure is (for example they don't really know about libraries and linking. They just know that when you need to access function X, you need to add Y to the code, and then an error can pop up in the magic linking process, and that means that you have done something wrong in your incantation to get X working, so you retrace your magic procedure to see where you angered the Gods by not following the prescribed ritual.
Also there are many that don't really know how the Internet works, they are at the same level with the user public. But they program Web apps! Only don't ask them if a feature is best done in server-side vs. client-side because you'll find the depth of their disinformation.
Answers vary depending on the situation... (Score:3, Insightful)
A lot of people seem to be of the opinion that IDEs are somehow "soft" on students, and they won't learn anything with them. I think this is pure nonsense. It reminds me of the people who argue against letting kids who already know how to add, subtract, multiply and divide use calculators. (It's actually worse than this since an IDE doesn't actually program for you, while a calculator actually does do mathematical operations).
IDEs tend to be extremely complicated pieces of software, so students will end up using a lot of time learning the IDE. When to introduce them to everyone is a judgement call, but I'd still say for 2nd semester students it's more of a hinderance than a help. If you could somehow find a very limited scope IDE that only did things like finding syntax errors and didn't take more than a few minutes to learn, I'd say introduce that IDE right away, even in a first programming course. After a third or forth semester of programming it should actively encouraged to use a more complicated IDE.
Re:I would say IDEs (Score:4, Insightful)
As for the question of whether or not you should use an IDE to teach a language class, I think using a text editor and CLI has the potential to be just as confusing as a bloated IDE. I recommend one of the slim IDEs, such as JCreator LE, Textpad, or Dev-C++. They're all light, do very little work the student, but make sure no one is hunting around for a make file.
Aero
Re:... Yes and no (Score:3, Insightful)
Definately. Although I don't agree with people who say you should be taught assembly language before normal programming (languages are a fairly full conceptual abstraction of machine code, learning it can be an impediment some of the time, other than perhaps languages with direct memory management, but even then I'm not sold on the idea), you should definately learn your languages first. If you learn the language, then the IDE, it eases your work, and it's easy to learn, because you understand why its features are helpful. If you start with an IDE, changing to another language, or even to another IDE, can be very difficult.
Re:Not at first (Score:5, Insightful)
If you go the non-IDE route, I still think vi is not the way to go. I (have to) use it all the time when sys-admin-ing systems, but for developers there is no reason not to use something like gedit, nedit, etc. Giving them vi is a guarantee for your students to hate sw development.
And personally I would spend one lesson on CLI based compiling and linking of 'hello world', to show what happens under the water of an IDE and then I would quickly move on to something like Netbeans.
Re:Why bother? (Score:4, Insightful)
What I'm describing is a simple read-write-sleep loop. It can't possibly be too hard for someone who's supposed to write a working program on his own as an assignment.
Because knowing vi or some other Unix text editor has nothing to do with knowing how to write C code ? The requirement that you had to use a pre-installed editor in the server was simply stupid. Unless, of course, it was meant to inspire such solutions.
A stupid man walks through a rock. A smart man walks around it. An engineer builds a hydraulic arm to move the rock aside and walks where it used to be. When all is said and done, it's the engineers that are movers and shakers, everyone else is simply along for the ride.
The point ? I'm not really sure. I guess it's that an engineer, including a software engineer, is supposed to have a mindset of seeing challenges, not problems. If someone tells you that you must use Vi over SSH to make a program, you don't bitch and whine - you work around the problem. That's what makes you and engineer - you don't complain about problems, you solve them. That attitude is more valuable than any particular skills, since without it, those skills don't do you any good.
I doubt very much any of those are going to become programmers, even if they somehow manage to graduate. If they can't get their code working now, why would they magically achieve that ability somewhere in the future ?
Re:I would say IDEs (Score:5, Insightful)
IDEs make programming easier to learn and more efficient. I still don't think he should spend a lot of time integrating it into his class. Tell them about the existance of IDEs and let them figure it out themselves.
Re:A scary story related to this question (Score:5, Insightful)
The drag-and-droppers solve every problem with ready-made components. They depend on the components provided to them by the IDE to such a degree that they generally are not able to design an actual algorithm. Yes, they know how to make a function, and a loop, or use an if structure, but they can't build a sorting algorithm, or build a data structure in memory and perform calculations across it. For what we do these people are useless.
Here's the rub: most of them have programming degrees of one form or another, and almost all of them have years of experience as a programmer, with adequate references.
We've learned the hard way to make everyone that comes to apply for a job with us take a basic programming knowledge test, where they have to design and implement an algorithm to solve a relatively easy problem that can not be solved with ready-made components (we place no requirements on the solution, other than that it should work), but can be solved by a competent programmer in less than an hour, and we give them four hours to do it. Most of the people that apply are incapable of even getting close to a solution. Some people with years of experience can't even produce one line of code towards the solution (after four hours they literally have nothing at all).
This is why I'm distrustful of teaching programming with IDE's. Sure, use IDE's, but please give them tasks that require them to understand about data structures, algorithms, and actual programming. It doesn't even have to be OOP (from my experience you can teach that afterwards). Just teach them programming beyond ifs, loops and functions. Make them build data storage facilities that use self-balancing trees for quick lookup. Make them implement various sorting algorithms and test their relative performance. Just make them do stuff that demonstrates actual competence.
Re:Go with what they are familiar with. (Score:5, Insightful)
I would suggest the oppsite. Go with something new.
I'd suggest you both fell into the trap posed by an incomplete question. Teaching someone to use an IDE and teaching them not to use an IDE are not mutually exclusive.
A good programmer should know the basics without distraction, and also know when to save time by using an IDE.
Re:A scary story related to this question (Score:3, Insightful)
By the time I graduated 10 years ago, we had to (among other things):
- write a real time multi-tasking OS with a non trivial application for a Motorola 68K processor in C/asm
- write a compiler for a given language (their own unique language)
- write a real time multi-process application to control a PBX in C
- write a real time application to control a physical robot
None of these used an IDE, and nowhere was a language ever taught (except Prolog) - it was expected you learn the languages yourself as it was the application that was important to the class.
The complier course especially gave great insight as to what a compiler really does. The quality of my code improved immensely once I learned what the compiler really does with the code.
IDEs come and go. If you are teaching a language, then give them an environment that doesn't hide anything of the language from them. It could be an IDE if its minimal, or it could be just text. Better yet let them choose whatever they want, but give them problems that the IDE can't help them with.
Re:Go with what they are familiar with. (Score:3, Insightful)
If you are a proficient COBOL/mainframe programmer, you will not have a hard time finding a nice high paying job for life. So no, it's not outdated by any means.
Re:I would say IDEs (Score:4, Insightful)
IDE Way - The students will probably be able to develop faster and thus you can progress more quickly through more ideas and thus you can perhaps get more accomplished. Plus they can gain experience with the ins and outs of classpaths, IDE installation, things like that that they'll need to learn eventually anyway for real world Java development.
Non IDE Way - They might get through 4/5ths of the above lesson plan, but on the flip side they'll be closer to the metal, as someone already said and they'll learn to develop good style habits from the start and to debug even when they have no tool to lean on, just the JDK.
I personally would go with #2, but it depends on what you want to set out to accomplish. If you want to get deep into the language, #1 might be the way to go. But if you want to make sure they can truly walk before running, definitely #2.
Re:Go for the IDE (Score:3, Insightful)
Why the need to choose between paper and computer? Why the need to choose between vi/emacs and IDE? This is all nonsense. First thing is to decide what knowledge is student expected to display. If the sudents needs to display good organizing skill, mental discipline, good memory and expert knowledge of problem domain, by all means push them to paper or vi/emacs. If you want the students to display the knowledge of grammar, whether in natural or synthetic language, then remove the obstacles that require so much more. You might not want to give students an IDE with RAD tools integrated, but any GUI text editor with syntax highlight should do, just like any word processor with spell-and-grammar checker will do for texts.
First step in school of writing is to master the grammar and style. This can only be achieved if the student doesn't have helpers (live or automated) that clean up his/her mistakes. The student must be able to proof-read own texts, spot mistakes and fix them. No need to to this on paper, but it certainly shouldn't be done with F9.
First step in school of programming is to master the grammar and style. This can only be achieved if the student doesn't have helpers (live or automated) that write plumbing code for him/her. The student must be able to read his own code, understand it and write it from first "public class", to the last "}". No need to do this with vi/emacs, as there is not context help, no language reference a single click away, no drop down context menus to insert class member names. However, there should be no magic Alt-Whatever key to create complete class construct all ready for inserting the code into members, let alone some magic RAD builder. These things hurt students, not help them.
Once the students are past the introductionary stage, you can start moulding them. Once you know your natural grammar and style, you can focus on what do you want to write. Once you know synthetic language grammar and constructs, you can focus on whole applications with GUI and all. Just like established columnist writes a column and presses that magic F9 button to catch anything he/she missed, the programmer clicks couple of buttons to write that plumbing that holdes the logic together. But stay away of tools that will do this for you when you don't master those things yet.
One thing is to lecture basics of programming. IDE can be used for all the help in writing the code, but it shouldn't be abused to write code constructs. When the students know how to write these basic construct by themselves, then comes the time to start lecturing the use of IDE and the tools that it provides. Students should obtain complete knowledge from the basics of how to write in plain editor, all the way to knowing the tools that will make them productive when they go out and start doing this for life.
It's similar with algebra. As a student, I had to display knowledge in three areas:
where I had to display the knowledge of axioms and theorems
where I had to display the knowledge of using the theory on short practical tasks
where I had to display the knowledge of solving large problems in as efficient ways as possible
Catch was that you couldn't take tests 2 and 3, if you failed test 1, and you couldn't take test 3, if you failed test 2. It was simple bullshit filter, that worked perfectly.
Programming is just like that. You should first understand the syntax (statemets, operators, how do they fit together), only then you can start writing short snippets (reading, writing, calculating, sorting, ...), and only after you know this, you can start thinking about writing complete application with GUI (using data binding, database access, designing usable GUI, ...). Each step takes you further to the point of useful knowledge, but you just can't skip any of them. Lecturer just has to decide on the right tools for the right level and don't let the students skip steps that are needed for complete understanding.
Re:I would say IDEs (Score:2, Insightful)
I never said otherwise. I never said that an IDE impedes work of a good programmer (I was an emacers for years and now swear by eclipse, mostly for its refactoring tools, but then again, refactoring is part of software development, not programming). I said an IDE impedes the process of becoming a good programmer.
One of my interview questions is what IDE do they use and specifically what features do they use it for.
If I get someone who says they use Eclipse or Netbeans for its refactoring support, it shows me they really know what they're doing.
so far, i haven't even had a candidate in the last 2 months that could even say what refactoring is.
Re:I would say IDEs (Score:3, Insightful)
Every English teacher in the world would love it if spell checkers went away. Why? because then kids would have to actually learn how to f'in' spell!!!!
The spell checker has already created the handicapp. Especially as the spell checker doesn't get them to read for the correct they're/their/there etc., because they're all *spelled* correctly. (Yeah, Word supposedly has grammer checking, but its been wrong on my writing multiple times).
Hmmm... (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, the lack of a need to get a product out of the door means that you can spend time on things that give a foundation. That educational requirements are different is an advantage. Which firms, for example, would spend three years teaching someone a maths degree? Yet those same firms would gladly hire a mathematician!
Re:Why hate MS? (Score:2, Insightful)
please don't! (Score:3, Insightful)
The focus should be 100% on the code. The editor should be completely transparent to the student.
Eclipse (Score:3, Insightful)
We used to use a poor IDE, but a number of the grad students convinced the university to switch to Eclipse. There are a lot of benefits, but here's two:
First, code completion, and tool-tip documentation helps the students learn the API. Students with C++ experience will be trying to overcome the fact that everything's a reference, default virtual methods, garbage collection, and basic java syntax. Forcing them to memorize the API and its associated documentation is a waste of time when good tools exist to feed them this information as they need it. It also does some import statements for you, which is so very nice.
Second, error detection and suggestions teach the students as they go. If they type up a bunch of code and compile it, they'll get some error on the first thing they worked on, and their head will be on something else, so it just confuses them. Eclipse highlights syntax errors as you type, so you catch and correct these errors while your thought process is still in the right context. In addition, Eclipse will suggest corrections for common errors, typos, etc. Error messages may seem intuitive to the experienced programmer, but to a novice, it's just greek. I think I spent most of my lab time trying to convey to students what the error messages really meant, and how they could use them to fix their code.
Bottom line is, learning is a process where you learn one thing at a time, and feedback at any step of the process is good. By using a good IDE, you are able to focus on more general concepts, which are transferable to other languages. Otherwise, they just learn the API and what the error messages mean, and lose a lot of valuable time.
Just my two cents.
trick question... :) (Score:2, Insightful)
In the real world, nobody in their right minds works without an IDE. So teach it that way.
Jesus Christ what a question (Score:2, Insightful)
As it may be obvious, I feel VERY strongly about the topic because when I was at Memphis State in the early 90s I was paying to take classes teaching CLi based Borland C, and getting PAID to code real estate apps for Macintoshes, by very nature a GUI. This particular problem, and the large smelly curmudgeonly professor that created it, just about led to my leaving computers altogether in frustration. Fortunately, I swtiched to English as a degree (abandoning the opportunity to pay to learn 80s technology in the 90s
Lemme say this plainly, I AM a coder. I spend 16-18 hours a day in front of a computer writing PACS systems for radiology and designing the way that the information that is generated by MRI modalities is going to find its way through data storage structures and then finally in front of a doctor. I also happen to have spent a large amount of time (about 6 years) coding against Solaris/Linux oracle in shells for utility apps, and I have to say that while Vi may be the king of the editors, even the primitiveness of Glade owns it.
An when I hire ppl for what are real work coding jobs, I want them to be able to use a STANDARD IDE, not just any one either. I don't have the time to try to teach standard topics like Sourcesafe or the VS IDE, so by all means PLEASE START TEACHING IT IN SCHOOLS.
--chitlenz
IDE lets you focus on programming (Score:3, Insightful)
Using an IDE in school is nothing new. Back in the late 80s most of the college programming courses I took used Pascal, and Turbo Pascal 4 and 5, with integrated editors and compilers, were godsends. The alternative was to use a command line compiler on a VAX, which was horrible in comparison.
Re:... Yes and no (Score:3, Insightful)
A GUI -- with a good IDE -- does one thing that tossing the kids at a command line won't do. It makes it easy to "get into" programming. At the least, the FIRST class should be taught with an IDE. Maybe even using Visual Basic or OOo's BASIC. Once they go from drooling non-programmers, and have both a little confidence and a little knowledge, slap them into full-bore programming.
Re:Not at first (Score:4, Insightful)
I think emacs is a better editor to start off with than any of the others suggested so far. Here's why:
Easy to use basically in X mode since it has menus, etc. You can save and quit without knowing c-x c-s c-x c-x at first and other useful functions are available via the menus.
Indenting! Emacs teaches us what good code looks like because hitting the tab key puts the line in the right spot. If we're talking python, this is a little different, but C, Java, etc. you need to be bashed in the head with good code style when starting off.
Why jump into a different editor that is just as easy to use as emacs in seperate window mode (or even just XEmacs) when you get all this with the integrated debugger, split windows, indenting, etc?
I am not trying to start up a vi vs. emacs debate because I myself use both editors (I know, blasphemy) when it suits the purpose (vi is good for quick edits, macros; emacs is good for development, debugging; I can go on and on). I am just saying that emacs is totally scalable in terms of ease of use and it is a good editor to start with.
Re:I would say IDEs (Score:2, Insightful)
The very first experiance everyone has with code here is simple text-editor/command line, coding, compliling, and running. After about a week-ish of writing simple "hello world" programs, they are introducted to a relatively bare bones compilor JCreator [jcreator.com] (basically it has syntax highlighting, auto-indentation, and project building, but you still have to compile the code and wade through the error results yourself.)
After students passed that semester of basic coding, the next semester introduced IDE's with more features, like eclipse [eclipse.org], which does fix simple errors for you and basically make the coding go faster so the students get a more general view on whatever is being taught.
It seemed to me this philosophy worked the best, when students were just learning, they had to figure out what was wrong and catch it on their own, but as they got more proficient, they were given tools that did the basic stuff for them.
Re:I would say IDEs (Score:2, Insightful)
Of &$*%ing course you don't need that! What you do need is an editor. It doesn't matter which one - it can be edlin if that's your fancy.
People should be free to choose their own devel environment, not taught it. Posters complain about having to learn emacs in a programming class - how long do you think it takes to learn the ins and outs of a freaking IDE?
Let people work with any environment they want - especially beginners. If you're building in notepad and someone else is using Word and saving as text, at least you've got that basic idea that the IDE is not the language. If all of the programming you've ever seen has been through one interface and one interface only, then you will - even subconsciously - have a ton of false assumptions about how it is that programming actually works, and you will be less prepared for moving to a different environment.
Basically, monoculture == bad. Especially for something as ubiquitous and simple as a text editor.
A good programmer is a lazy programmer (Score:2, Insightful)
Go to the accounting department... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I would say IDEs (Score:4, Insightful)
Why not let students make use of IDE features such as code completion, color coding, et cetera? When they get into the real world, they will be able to use an IDE with these features if they please, why force them to practice on something they won't actually use when they graduate? That's just a waste of time for the students. Sure, some of these IDE features make learning the language easier for them, but it won't turn them into code idiots. They'll still need to understand the language in order to be able to program with it!
FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS GOOD IN THE WORLD... (Score:3, Insightful)
I cannot tell you how many people I deal with all the time that simply cannot function without an IDE. An IDE is a tool, not a crutch, and I see too many people using it a a crutch. Until you are 100% sure they know the underlying concepts, DO NOT let them use a tool that might save them a few seconds of actual thought. I can't stress is enough. I've seen the results of people that can't perform without the computer thinking for them.
The business world will eventually learn that hacks throwing together craplets costs them far more time and money then a few talented developers doing it right the first time. Or they will continue to throw money at the problem, expecting that just getting 30 warm bodies that know how to press the right buttons in the right IDE will be a good strategic plan. Chances are the truth won't be realized until they go out of business.
Also, I should point out that I hear so many stories on a nearly daily basis on how the IDE didn't do what it was supposed to and someone spent four hours figuring out why it was munging a classpath, or not generating the XML config files for framework X properly, or some such mess. They spend more time fighting the tool than they do getting work done. It's a joke! How exactly is that IDE making them more efficient?!?
I don't mind if people want to use an IDE. I personally don't, and I frankly work more efficiently than a great deal of people I know who swear by IDEs (I'm a bit of an extreme case though... after 20+ years of programming, my technique is pretty refined). But if your going to use an IDE, you damned well better know what's going on underneath. If you don't then you have no business developing in the first place.
Related to this is my lamentations about people not knowing low-level programming any more... hell, even I haven't written real code in Assembly in a few years, but I *did* for a while, and I understand all the basic concepts... just being able to "think like a computer", which you'll never learn using tools that hide the details from you, is a lost skill IMO, and is the reason so many crap developers are floating around these days. It's all about thought process, not about what real skills you have. Anyone can memorize this algorithm or that domain model, but the people that can derive them themselves (or something roughly equivalent anyway) are the ones that are worth something. If you aren't "in sync" with the computer, at both a low and high level, your not an especially good developer IMO. IDEs make it easier for those that don't understand to *appear* to be in sync, but they really aren't.
Eh, whatever. The "best" development environment is an age old debate. If you have the basic skills, its a moot point: use whatever your most comfortable with and can be most efficient with. For some it's Eclipse with all sorts of plugins, for some it's vi and a command prompt. If your learning though, and if your teaching, do yourself and your students a favor and don't allow them to become crap developers who can only push buttons to get the desired output like trained monkeys. Force them to think, force them to become as intimate as possible with the machine (which is already difficult in Java, but still), and only *after* you are sure they are, *then* introduce them to the tools that will theoretically make them more efficient.
It's just my opinion, but it happens to be right
Both (Score:3, Insightful)
Secondly, they should learn how to implement this knowledge in the most simple language possible. BASIC, Pascal, etc. Don't confuse them with an advanced tool when it's the code that matters at this point.
After that, keep raising the bar and exposing them to more and more of the language, then introduce the IDE. How code translates to the machine, to the project, to the enterprise is irrelevant if they would-be software developer doesn't understand a control statement. Keep the focus on the code before you introduce a way to make it easier. The learning curve is steep enough for some.
That's my two cents.
To IDE or not to IDE... (Score:2, Insightful)
That said, for large projects, I use an IDE every day. Every now and then I'll transfer a project over to a different IDE just to see if I like it better. Sometimes I need to dig in and fix a makefile.am, but since I know the nuts and bolts I'm free to do so.
I'd recommend you teach them to use the best tool for the job. At first, for single file projects, an IDE is a bulldozer in a flower garden. Forcing someone to compile every file by hand and then link by hand would be like like bringing a spade into a construction yard. Neither fit quite right, but might eventually get the job done. So if it were me... I'd give them tools as they need them. Make them compile and link a three file project and say, "hey look here's something that will make it a little easier." Then students could use the tools as seemed best to them.