[Bluej-discuss] formatter extension?

[Aryeh M. Friedman]

>
> 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.
>   

I couldn't agree more but for other reasons that have been tempered by a
slightly different way I came to user BlueJ:

    When I went back to school (for various reasons my local community
college and since then transfered to a 4 year) I already had 15 years
experience in C/C++ from the command line (never used an IDE before).  
Since I had no previous college credit and my school doesn't allow for
prior experience I had do the entire programming sequence starting with
Java I and continuing through with 2 more Java classes plus the normal
C/C++/ASM stuff thrown in.  Suffice it to say the profs and dept head
very quickly saw I was their equal and arranged for me to tutor all
computer classes (apps, networking/web, CS).  Due to budget reasons I
was not able to tutor via the school this semster but still do some
private stuff.  At the same time I decided to start a small Java
Developer Tools software house to pay for grad school.

    Through out all this I discovered the only IDE I can tolerate
(BlueJ).  The reason I can tolerate it is *STAYS OUT OF MY WAY*; namely
it has just enough stuff needed to allow for IDE style development (plus
some very useful convince things like the class diagram) but it doesn't
attempt to dictate any kind of style issue towards me (I even turn off
auto ident in the editor).  So as a result because I work on a platform
that historically (upto about 3 months ago) had very poor support for
BlueJ and my personal preferences do 99% of my work from the command
line but use BlueJ for prototyping and/or sketching out skeletal code.

Some things I learned from tutoring (sorry to say but I think profs
often don't really understand the depth of issues the students who need
tutoring face):

1. Java is likely already too complex for a true beginners language but
since qbasic is not around any more it is the best we have

2. Control flow is the single most confusing part of learning
programming for most students .   Specifically how to construct
logically correct conditions (I was amazed when I found not a single one
of my class mates or tutoring students [about 150 total] had ever heard
of DeMorgan's Law).

3. Almost all beginners have a very hard time mentally visualizing  how
there  program is executed.  What I mean by this is they often get then
and else clauses mixed up and such or complex statements completely
baffle them.

For reasons 2 and 3 I **HIGHLY** discourage any kind of style generator
and/or checker (at least avialabe to the student).   Learning the reason
for proper indenting goes a long way to help the student understand
control flow and visualiazation skills.