I suppose it depends on the student, and what they consider a good "immediate result". I've never been very excited by the world wide whatever, and web programming has always seemed more of a bore than anything else. When I make something happen with jQuery, I can admire the work that went into making it happen, but I never feel like I've done anything particularly interesting myself. This could never be exciting to me - might be to others, though. I acknowledge the likelihood that I am eccentric in this. But if you picture a kid learning woodworking and carpentry, I'm the kid who's much more excited by the birdhouse I made myself than I would be with the product of a birdhouse-making machine. Even if my birdhouse was off-kilter and dubiously sound of structure, it'd be mine, and that's what I'd be excited by. A perfectly-made bird mansion produced by the push of a button would be boring to me. Java seems to me to offer more latitude for building birdhouses than javascript, to me, but that's probably because I'm not as familiar with javascript. If you're teaching people how to make birdhouses, and not just how to operate automated birdhouse-makers, then I think we're in substantial agreement, whichever language you use.
Happy Newtonmas to all! May your bodies in motion remain in motion. 2011/12/25 Cédric Beust ♔ <[email protected]> > > On Sat, Dec 24, 2011 at 8:47 AM, Jon Kiparsky <[email protected]>wrote: > >> I'm not saying that Python isn't a good first language, there may be good >> arguments for that, but I don't think that the REPL argument is one of >> them. It's easy enough in Java to get immediate results. > > > Agreed. And I also agree that immediate results are extremely important to > get beginners excited. Much more important than pretty much anything else I > can think of. The first weeks are decisive to ignite this spark, and this > should be priority #1 of the instructor. > > Like I said before, I think that Javascript scores extremely high in this > aspect, probably higher than any other language. > > You sit students in front of an HTML page that you have prepared, show > them first how to edit some HTML and press refresh. Instant result. Very > gratifying. > > Then you ask them to edit some CSS. Refresh. Elements change color. > Instant results. > > Then you make them display an alert in Javascript when the page loads. > Instant result. > > Then you have them put a breakpoint (any of Chrome, WebKit or Firefox will > do, they're all excellent). Magic, the code stops there, and they can > navigate through the objects (probably a bit early for that though). Even > better, they can modify these objects. Neat, but no visual results on the > page yet. > > Then you have them type a simple JQuery ($('.banner').attr('class', > 'selected') and blam, the banner appears. > > Then you extend this to JQueries that touch several selectors at the same > time and the page lights up like a Christmas tree. > > Languages that have some native graphic support are nice, but in this day > and age, I think starting with web pages is the way to go. > > -- > Cédric > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "The Java Posse" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
