Path: csiph.com!usenet.pasdenom.info!weretis.net!feeder4.news.weretis.net!rt.uk.eu.org!eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Eric Sosman Newsgroups: comp.lang.java.programmer Subject: Re: Teaching Java, teaching what? Date: Wed, 11 Dec 2013 21:35:32 -0500 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 31 Message-ID: References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Injection-Date: Thu, 12 Dec 2013 02:35:34 +0000 (UTC) Injection-Info: mx05.eternal-september.org; posting-host="858a9d65d95f4ea4d355bd116aa2cdbf"; logging-data="11650"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1/efKBA5DDRNS8ubzIMb+dc" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:24.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/24.2.0 In-Reply-To: Cancel-Lock: sha1:SAh9Ye7SUgh+VKiJgK0+IkiKEfI= Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.java.programmer:26853 On 12/11/2013 6:36 PM, Stefan Ram wrote: > "Chris Uppal" writes: >> earlier: /why/ are these students taking your course ? Is it as a first step > > Why students attend, I can only guess! The save guess would > be: »to learn Java«. They range from college students of > computer science, via professional programmers (but in other > languages) to hobbyists. Elsethread you wrote >>>> [...] I now often have only >>>> 30 hours to take students from »no programming experience >>>> whatsoever« to »first steps with Swing« [...] But now you're saying "no programming experience whatsoever" is really not correct for some of your students, maybe not even for any of them. Perhaps you need to develop a more detailed picture of the audience for which your class is intended, and then adjust the syllabus accordingly. Here in the States there's a popular radio program about matters automotive: maintenance, buying advice, strange problems, and so on. One of the program's pearls of wisdom is that you should not take your car to a garage that advertises "We Specialize In All Makes And Models!" Maybe your hope of doing "We Cater To Every Level Of Experience And Interest!" has a similar problem ... -- Eric Sosman esosman@comcast-dot-net.invalid