I do not believe that starting people out doing things the wrong way is
ever a good start.
Teach OOP from the day one. Not as a name or a theory but as a normal
way to program.
Just start with simple classes and give the students a framework for
testing that they do not have to deal with.
You can start with very simple classes representing everyday objects
that everyone can understand.
You can introduce various types of variables very easily - one at a
time. (Cats have a name, add in age, later add date of birth)
You can add Arrarys very easily in the context of a real world object.
(Add in an array of offspring)
If you provide the "Pet" interface with the test program, the students
will see how their names for properties do not matter.
By the time you have to explain what OOP is, the kids will already be
programming OOP and wonder why anyone ever did it any other way.
Ron
Alan MacDougall wrote:
Start small and work your way up. You don't need classes until the
functions start to get unmanageable. That won't happen until you've
thoroughly covered variables and control structures. By the time
classes are necessary, the students should be relieved to have a way
to organize their forest of elaborate functions. Even if they're
introduced in an organic and natural way, like building a Swing
application, they're going to just be one more distraction for people
who are struggling with the syntax of a for loop. They're an
intermediate topic, treat them as one.
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