The case for Delphi verus Java in SA high schools

Again, the bureaucrats know better than the rest of the developed world!
 
Fsck knows. We had a glorified notepad at school when we did java :/

/install Python
/open Notepad++/whatever
Code: 
print("The real tool is the minister of education")
/python minedu.py
 
Basjohn said:
Even Turbo Pascal is better than Java.

Or hell, give the kids a real education, school them in fundamental C or at least Visual Basic.

Java is a horrible language set. Anyone needing proof of that should try load up JCPSP, then load up PPSSPP aaaaand then learn that the later was built in 1/10th of the time.
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I'm sorry what? You are saying Java is horrible language simply because build time is slow... You do realize what kids are coding at a high school level and the impact build time has on them, if you didn't I'll bring you up to speed; 0 impact. By that logic we should be teaching high school kids assembler.

As a second year Computer Science student who took I.T in high school and is literate in multiple programming languages I can tell you now, that Java is far more beneficial at University than Delphi will ever be. Java is an expanding language whereas Delphi is the opposite.

I feel Java is a great starting platform for high school children, in my experience it is the most beginner friendly. With regards to IDEs and programming environments, when I started in high school we used a text editor with a built in compiler, Ready. Then migrated onto Netbeans IDE which I was happy with for a long time. Recently my university (Tuks) bought the licence for the entire EBIT faculty to have access to the Ultimate version of IntelliJ and I must say, it's and incredible IDE to work with.
 
Honestly, I don't know why they never consider JavaScript.

To get started, all you need is a modern operating system. This gives you the interpreter (web browser) and editor (any text editor) for free. Also, it's a very relevant language to learn.
 
EtienneK said:
Honestly, I don't know why they never consider JavaScript.

To get started, all you need is a modern operating system. This gives you the interpreter (web browser) and editor (any text editor) for free. Also, it's a very relevant language to learn.
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Look, you JavaScript okes already ruined our industry. There's no need to ruin the education system as well. We heard you.

Now go play with one of the latest frameworks that was released this morning and leave the children alone.
 
Hamster said:
Look, you JavaScript okes already ruined our industry. There's no need to ruin the education system as well. We heard you.

Now go play with one of the latest frameworks that was released this morning and leave the children alone.
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:D
 
I couldn't really give a crap which language is used - it's mostly irrelevant. To me what's worrying is that the syllabus appears to be relaxing on the fundamentals (boolean algebra, system architecture, algorithms, complexity, etc.) in favour of forms, GUI's, "application skills" and random pieces of IT knowledge.
 
cguy said:
I couldn't really give a crap which language is used - it's mostly irrelevant. To me what's worrying is that the syllabus appears to be relaxing on the fundamentals (boolean algebra, system architecture, algorithms, complexity, etc.) in favour of forms, GUI's, "application skills" and random pieces of IT knowledge.
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These are school children though, not first years. Shouldn't software dev in school be used to spark their interest and teach them the basics instead of going more hardcore? When you go to uni they start from scratch anyway so what's the real point?
 
Hamster said:
These are school children though, not first years. Shouldn't software dev in school be used to spark their interest and teach them the basics instead of going more hardcore? When you go to uni they start from scratch anyway so what's the real point?
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Yeah programming isn't just making pretty things, it also involves doing documentation etc.
It helps prepare students for life as a software dev, otherwise you end up with students in university who have no idea where they're going with their life.
 
Hamster said:
Look, you JavaScript okes already ruined our industry. There's no need to ruin the education system as well. We heard you.

Now go play with one of the latest frameworks that was released this morning and leave the children alone.
Click to expand...

I'm not a JavaScript 'oke'. I'm an oke with 8 years of development experience, mostly in Java. Thus I know when to choose the best tool for the job.

And in this case, JavaScript is great.
 
cguy said:
I couldn't really give a crap which language is used - it's mostly irrelevant. To me what's worrying is that the syllabus appears to be relaxing on the fundamentals (boolean algebra, system architecture, algorithms, complexity, etc.) in favour of forms, GUI's, "application skills" and random pieces of IT knowledge.
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I agree. People are so hung up on their fav programming language, they completely miss the point of what education is about
 
EtienneK said:
I'm not a JavaScript 'oke'. I'm an oke with 8 years of development experience, mostly in Java. Thus I know when to choose the best tool for the job.

And in this case, JavaScript is great.
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Years of experience by itself is an indication of nothing, especially if you don't know the experience of the others in this thread.

...not that I'm slating your abilities, just your sense of humour.
 
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Hamster said:
These are school children though, not first years. Shouldn't software dev in school be used to spark their interest and teach them the basics instead of going more hardcore? When you go to uni they start from scratch anyway so what's the real point?
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These are the basics. I find it bizarre that back in the 80's, much of this was targeted at a far younger audience than high school students. The fact that this is considered hardcore or boring today is what I find scary.

Boolean algebra (simplification, elementary adders), algorithms and complexity (sorts and binary searches), data structures (arrays, linked lists, trees), and basic computer architecture (cpu, alu, registers, ram, buses, io devices), etc. were all part of my high school syllabus. They taught us logo when we were 6, basic in std. 6, and pascal from std.8-10.
 
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cguy said:
These are the basics. I find it bizarre that back in the 80's, much of this was targeted at a far younger audience than high school students. The fact that this is considered hardcore or boring today is what I find scary.

Boolean algebra (simplification, elementary adders), algorithms and complexity (sorts and binary searches), data structures (arrays, linked lists, trees), and basic computer architecture (cpu, alu, registers, ram, buses, io devices), etc. were all part of my high school syllabus. They taught us logo when we were 6, basic in std. 6, and pascal from std.8-10.
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:wtf:

Suppose it is because of the same reason "math literacy" exists. Most students are too "dumb" and the pass rate must not fall.
 
cguy said:
These are the basics. I find it bizarre that back in the 80's, much of this was targeted at a far younger audience than high school students. The fact that this is considered hardcore or boring today is what I find scary.

Boolean algebra (simplification, elementary adders), algorithms and complexity (sorts and binary searches), data structures (arrays, linked lists, trees), and basic computer architecture (cpu, alu, registers, ram, buses, io devices), etc. were all part of my high school syllabus. They taught us logo when we were 6, basic in std. 6, and pascal from std.8-10.
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Well it depends I learnt some of those in school but they were never part of what you needed to know to pass Matric. Infact to pass the Matric programming paper most work can be covered in a year or two years if you want to be lenient.
 
Hamster said:
:wtf:

Suppose it is because of the same reason "math literacy" exists. Most students are too "dumb" and the pass rate must not fall.
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I'm sure that's part of it. I also think that today there are so many levels of abstraction between the user and the hardware that kids today just accept it as magic, and never get the opportunity to take things apart to see how they work.
 
Brentontw said:
I feel Java is a great starting platform for high school children, in my experience it is the most beginner friendly.
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I disagree with Java being a good choice: the main problem being the boilerplate code that one has to write to get even a simple "Hello World" program running, and the approach taken by teachers being "you don't need to understand this" (Delphi has the same problem, for what it's worth). This critique explains the problem well:

Let us propose the following principle: The irresistible beauty of programming consists in the reduction of complex formal processes to a very small set of primitive operations. Java, instead of exposing this beauty, encourages the programmer to approach problem-solving like a plumber in a hardware store: by rummaging through a multitude of drawers (i.e. packages) we will end up finding some gadget (i.e. class) that does roughly what we want. How it does it is not interesting! The result is a student who knows how to put a simple program together, but does not know how to program. A further pitfall of the early use of Java libraries and frameworks is that it is impossible for the student to develop a sense of the run-time cost of what is written because it is extremely hard to know what any method call will eventually execute.
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At a school level, you want to get people excited around programming, and "[approaching] problem solving like a plumber in a hardware store" is, in my opinion, not the way to do it. People will likely get far more excited about programming if they learn what the components actually do.

There's several languages that are good for this purpose. Python is cleanly designed, well documented and relatively kind to beginners, while Pascal (despite being antiquated) was actually designed as a teaching language (full disclosure: it's what got me started... and I've never used the language since high school). There's probably others that fall into this category, but there's perhaps a general point here: if a language does too much for you, it's probably a great language for production, but a terrible one for learning. Learning languages such as Java, C#, C++ et. al. is probably best left to a tertiary education environment (unless the student has the mentality and motivation to self-teach, which is a whole different boardgame).
 
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