Groups > comp.lang.java.programmer > #33081

Re: Java primitive variable objects

From	Martin Gregorie <martin@address-in-sig.invalid>
Newsgroups	comp.lang.java.programmer
Subject	Re: Java primitive variable objects
Date	2015-11-10 20:05 +0000
Organization	A noiseless patient Spider
Message-ID	<n1tin5$8b8$1@dont-email.me> (permalink)
References	(6 earlier) <n1rh0d$gf7$1@dont-email.me> <n1rjnc$gme$1@dont-email.me> <n1rn6o$qov$1@dont-email.me> <n1spqc$30v$1@dont-email.me> <n1t91s$6kk$1@dont-email.me>

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On Tue, 10 Nov 2015 12:23:26 -0500, Jerry Stuckle wrote:

> You can teach a person facts, but you cannot teach them to learn.  That
> can only come from one's self desire.
>
I'm not so sure. I think that, if you expose people to the techniques of 
picking the essentials out of a mass of detail, both by example and by 
giving them practical exercises in doing it you can give them the skills 
they need to analyse and solve problems and to generalise these solutions 
to related problems. This skill set, along with the ability to 
concentrate on the task in hand, has to be the basis of self-motivated 
learning. 

One thing's for sure: if you're not encouraged to pick up that skill set 
and get comfortable using it, then self-directed learning will be very 
much harder, and will probably be impossible if you can't or won't 
concentrate on what you're doing.

>>> For instance, when I was in college, there was no C, much less C++. 
>>> So how was my university supposed to teach it?
>>>
>> They weren't, but if they did turned out properly educated graduates,
>> they'd be equipped to learn new languages by themselves.
>> 
>> 
> Yes and no.  I used to teach in the corporate world (contract
> instructor).  Among the classes I taught were Java and C++.  And, of
> course, within those courses were OO techniques.  The syntax of the
> language was easy for most students to pick up.  OO concepts were much
> harder for most students.
> 
Thats sort of what I'm saying, I think. Learning the syntax of a language 
is pretty much rote learning and gets ingrained by repetitive use, while 
OO techniques are a higher level abstract skill set that can be much more 
widely employed.

> But you already had a similar language, so it wasn't much of a jump for
> you.
>
Yeah, but PL/9 wasn't much like anything I'd used previously - block 
structures and a vaguely Algol/Pascal-like set of reserved words was 
about it.

I'd previously used Algol 60 10-15 years previously and never since, and 
had picked up Algol 68 6 years previously and, err, that was about it. C, 
was well in the future. 

IIRC I was using TAL before I was fluent in C although I had a C compiler 
on my 8/16 bit 6809 box, but scarcely touched it because it was 
agonisingly slow compared with PL/9. Where the C the editor and all four 
compiler phases were separately loaded and run in sequence from floppy 
disk to do a compilation, the PL/9 editor,compiler,debugger, source and 
compiled code were all memory resident and so a small compilation took 
literally 1-2 seconds - or a bit longer if you were pulling in additional 
source files from disk, but still hugely faster than that C compiler. 

> No, *I* equipped myself to learn.  The university just taught me the
> sciences of the day.
>
I'd respeckfully suggest that by treating CS as a branch of science or 
engineering rather than arts, your college would have provided a good 
grounding in the abstractions and thought processes those disciplines use 
and that may have more influential that you may realise.

-- 
martin@   | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
org       |

Thread

Java primitive variable objects Eric Douglas <e.d.programmer@gmail.com> - 2015-11-02 10:11 -0800
  Re: Java primitive variable objects Eric Sosman <esosman@comcast-dot-net.invalid> - 2015-11-02 14:15 -0500
    Re: Java primitive variable objects Eric Douglas <e.d.programmer@gmail.com> - 2015-11-02 13:03 -0800
      Re: Java primitive variable objects Eric Sosman <esosman@comcast-dot-net.invalid> - 2015-11-02 16:29 -0500
  Re: Java primitive variable objects Jan Burse <janburse@fastmail.fm> - 2015-11-02 22:46 +0100
    Re: Java primitive variable objects Jan Burse <janburse@fastmail.fm> - 2015-11-02 22:52 +0100
    Re: Java primitive variable objects Eric Sosman <esosman@comcast-dot-net.invalid> - 2015-11-02 17:47 -0500
  Re: Java primitive variable objects Joerg Meier <joergmmeier@arcor.de> - 2015-11-05 22:19 +0100
    Re: Java primitive variable objects Eric Douglas <e.d.programmer@gmail.com> - 2015-11-05 13:31 -0800
      Re: Java primitive variable objects Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2015-11-07 22:21 -0500
        Re: Java primitive variable objects Eric Douglas <e.d.programmer@gmail.com> - 2015-11-09 04:52 -0800
          Re: Java primitive variable objects Jerry Stuckle <jstucklex@attglobal.net> - 2015-11-09 08:54 -0500
            Re: Java primitive variable objects Eric Douglas <e.d.programmer@gmail.com> - 2015-11-09 07:27 -0800
              Re: Java primitive variable objects Jerry Stuckle <jstucklex@attglobal.net> - 2015-11-09 10:51 -0500
                Re: Java primitive variable objects Eric Douglas <e.d.programmer@gmail.com> - 2015-11-09 08:28 -0800
                Re: Java primitive variable objects Jerry Stuckle <jstucklex@attglobal.net> - 2015-11-09 11:57 -0500
                Re: Java primitive variable objects Eric Douglas <e.d.programmer@gmail.com> - 2015-11-09 10:13 -0800
                Re: Java primitive variable objects Eric Sosman <esosman@comcast-dot-net.invalid> - 2015-11-09 13:28 -0500
                Re: Java primitive variable objects Jerry Stuckle <jstucklex@attglobal.net> - 2015-11-09 14:53 -0500
                Re: Java primitive variable objects Nigel Wade <nmw@ion.le.ac.uk> - 2015-11-10 09:27 +0000
                Re: Java primitive variable objects "Jeffrey H. Coffield" <jeffrey@digitalsynergyinc.com> - 2015-11-09 10:44 -0800
                Re: Java primitive variable objects Martin Gregorie <martin@address-in-sig.invalid> - 2015-11-09 18:59 +0000
                Re: Java primitive variable objects Jerry Stuckle <jstucklex@attglobal.net> - 2015-11-09 15:02 -0500
                Re: Java primitive variable objects Martin Gregorie <martin@address-in-sig.invalid> - 2015-11-09 22:57 +0000
                Re: Java primitive variable objects Jerry Stuckle <jstucklex@attglobal.net> - 2015-11-09 19:16 -0500
                Re: Java primitive variable objects Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2015-11-09 20:55 -0500
                Re: Java primitive variable objects Jerry Stuckle <jstucklex@attglobal.net> - 2015-11-09 22:13 -0500
                Re: Java primitive variable objects Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2015-11-09 20:40 -0500
                Re: Java primitive variable objects Jerry Stuckle <jstucklex@attglobal.net> - 2015-11-09 22:23 -0500
          Re: Java primitive variable objects Martin Gregorie <martin@address-in-sig.invalid> - 2015-11-09 14:00 +0000
            Re: Java primitive variable objects Eric Douglas <e.d.programmer@gmail.com> - 2015-11-09 07:18 -0800
              Re: Java primitive variable objects Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2015-11-09 20:43 -0500
          Re: Java primitive variable objects Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2015-11-09 19:38 -0500
            Re: Java primitive variable objects Jerry Stuckle <jstucklex@attglobal.net> - 2015-11-09 20:26 -0500
              Re: Java primitive variable objects Martin Gregorie <martin@address-in-sig.invalid> - 2015-11-10 02:10 +0000
                Re: Java primitive variable objects Jerry Stuckle <jstucklex@attglobal.net> - 2015-11-09 22:12 -0500
                Re: Java primitive variable objects Martin Gregorie <martin@address-in-sig.invalid> - 2015-11-10 13:01 +0000
                Re: Java primitive variable objects Jerry Stuckle <jstucklex@attglobal.net> - 2015-11-10 12:23 -0500
                Re: Java primitive variable objects Eric Douglas <e.d.programmer@gmail.com> - 2015-11-10 10:10 -0800
                Re: Java primitive variable objects Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2015-11-10 22:08 -0500
                Re: Java primitive variable objects Martin Gregorie <martin@address-in-sig.invalid> - 2015-11-10 20:05 +0000
                Re: Java primitive variable objects Eric Douglas <e.d.programmer@gmail.com> - 2015-11-10 13:21 -0800
                Re: Java primitive variable objects Martin Gregorie <martin@address-in-sig.invalid> - 2015-11-10 23:30 +0000
                Re: Java primitive variable objects Jerry Stuckle <jstucklex@attglobal.net> - 2015-11-10 20:58 -0500
                Re: Java primitive variable objects Gene Wirchenko <genew@telus.net> - 2015-11-10 22:30 -0800
                Re: Java primitive variable objects Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2015-11-10 21:58 -0500
              Re: Java primitive variable objects Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2015-11-10 21:56 -0500
                Re: Java primitive variable objects Jerry Stuckle <jstucklex@attglobal.net> - 2015-11-10 22:19 -0500
                Re: Java primitive variable objects Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2015-11-10 22:42 -0500
                Re: Java primitive variable objects Jerry Stuckle <jstucklex@attglobal.net> - 2015-11-10 23:07 -0500
            Re: Java primitive variable objects Eric Douglas <e.d.programmer@gmail.com> - 2015-11-10 06:06 -0800
  Re: Java primitive variable objects Lew <lewbloch@gmail.com> - 2015-11-16 14:47 -0800

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