jim hopper wrote:

>I do understand you need to capture students attention, but i suspect
>you are misleading students into thinking computer programming is
>easy.  what happens next year when it gets HARD and they have to
>buckle down and do real work instead of just play?


I taught Ada in first year for 8 years. For many years i thought that
teaching the "proper" use of strings was the way to go. I understood it.

I should have noticed that the students didn't care for it, and that
they used my text_package (based on the Ada83 LRM package) quite
happily. When this finally clicked (boy was i slow!) i just threw
away most of the string stuff, and did Unbounded_String. Result?
Happy students.

Students now see GUI programs, and they want their programs to look
the same.

Tcl/Tk/any other GUI just doesn't cut the mustard i'm afraid. Too
much complicated stuff to know (pointers, packages, etc etc).

Java may have its faults, but the students -really- enjoy making
GUI programs. I'm sure VB is the same.



Dale