The Desktop Fishbowl
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Sunday, 25 August 2002

A sign that Apple is catching up with Microsoft—there's already a security patch for Jaguar. 10:12:19 PM

Rogers Cadenhead thinks my idea of avoiding main methods when teaching Java might be a bad idea: Beginners ought to be shown that they can accomplish something with the language before the subject of object-oriented programming is introduced, which often confuses the bejabbers out of people the first time they are exposed to it. After two minutes investigation, I discovered Rogers co-wrote one of the books I originally learned Java from, so perhaps I should listen. :) Perhaps it's a difference of situation, though. I find that objects are a lot easier to demonstrate than to describe - in the classes when I just read out the OO stuff from the foils, everyone shrugs and looks bemused. Then I sit down and show them, and it all becomes a lot clearer. The learning environment thingy might exacerbate the “telling” problem, while making the “showing” thing a lot easier. 10:00:29 PM