[Bluej-discuss] formatter extension?

[Lindsay Jeffers]

General discussion for users of BlueJ <bluej-discuss at bluej.org> writes:
>BlueJ's decisive virtues are simplicity and transparency.  All the
>"magical" features of environments like Eclipse and Netbeans are a
>godsend to experienced developers, which is what we hope at least some of
>our students will become, but to begin with there is a lot to be said for
>not interposing any clever tricks between the student and their code.

This pretty much covers my take on this topic, but it is an issue with
multiple opinions. Those of you who subscribe to the AP Computer Science
listserve have been following the often heated debate over there on
exactly this issue. For them, the issue is often focused on theory and
philosophy. For the users of the BlueJ listserve, I think the issue is one
of more specific practicality. There are many tools available to teach
Java and computer science; we on this listserve have made the choice of
BlueJ. That suggests we see the benefits of its interface design and
capabilities. 

My vote would be to add new features and capabilities very carefully. If
we want the feature set of Eclipse of NetBeans, we can jump to those
programs quite easily. It doesn't seem to me at all necessary that BlueJ
should echo all the capabilities of those other programs because it does
what it does so effectively already.

Lindsay Jeffers
Stevenson School Network Administrator
AP Computer Science Instructor