Valhalla Legends Archive

Java is a good starting language for a few reasons, It's rather simple, derived from many other languages and since its the main language being taught in college was probably the more common reason for a high school to base the change on. Theres more reasons but I think those are unarguable, and we don't need anouther language war in here too.

They don't offer any Computer Science courses in my district. They offer courses like C/C++, Java, Oracle, etc, but nothing AP and I feel the others are a waste of time and that they would go too slow.

I have digital imaging this year and we don't do anything or learn anything; it is a complete waste of time. We work on the crappiest ibooks which crash every 10 minutes. Our teacher just got certified this summer to teach photoshop. All she can say is "name your layers." She doesn't even know bryce but is trying to teach it to us. I can't see how the programming classes would be any different.

Next year our C++ class is becoming a Java class

Quote from: j0k3r on February 24, 2004, 08:37 PMMy guess is that they moved from C to Java for object oriented learning?

If they just wanted object-oriented, they could've gone with C++, which has some major advantages over Java (among them native support for unsigned types!)  Something bigger drove the switch to New Pascal.

According to our "school computer technician" Java is appliable to more operating systems than C++. Bullshit?

Quote from: j0k3r on February 24, 2004, 08:37 PM
MrRaza, the language is called Turing and was developed by students at UFT in the 80's. Visual Basic WAS the course, but it was booted out or something.

My guess is that they moved from C to Java for object oriented learning?

Cobol is useful, wish I was forced to learn it instead of turing.

Turing! that's it, I didn't mind the Visual Basic course at all, we got brand new textbooks on it. But as for the move to C/C++ to Java, it doesn't really bother me since I already know enough C++ to be proficient in it to actually understand it, and Java is a nice change, and it does some of the work for you, similar to Visual Basic.

Quote from: Hazard on February 24, 2004, 09:10 PM
According to our "school computer technician" Java is appliable to more operating systems than C++. Bullshit?

Not necessarily, but a Java program can be ran on more operating systems without being changed/recompiled.

Although it's also larger and slower. There are always tradeoffs...

Someone needs to help me find out why no one reads my replies.

Quote from: Hazard on February 24, 2004, 09:10 PM
According to our "school computer technician" Java is appliable to more operating systems than C++. Bullshit?

As Tuberload said, that's somewhat/mostly true. For instance, a Java applet that's viewed on a Windows machine can also mostly likely be viewed on a 9.x+ MacOS machine with little to no obvious differences. However, depending on how it was coded, oftentimes a C++ program coded for Windows may need to be modified in one way or another to be supported by a Mac machine.

Hrm, my highschool offers a C++ course. It also offers a java course, with the C++ course as a prereq. The AP compsci class says it recommends C++, but nothing about java. Doesn't look like my school is switching any time soon.

I'm taking AP Comp Sci right now and it's in java. The teacher, who has been programming for over 20 years, absolutely despises Java -- C++ is his language of preference.

To bad personal preference has very little to do with were the industry is headed. No one can only learn one programming language, and be very successful. Java, and C++ will coexist for years to come, and if you are serious about being a programmer why not just learn both of them?

Quote from: Kp on February 24, 2004, 09:08 PM

Quote from: j0k3r on February 24, 2004, 08:37 PMMy guess is that they moved from C to Java for object oriented learning?

If they just wanted object-oriented, they could've gone with C++, which has some major advantages over Java (among them native support for unsigned types!)  Something bigger drove the switch to New Pascal.

As Hostile stated (there ya got Hostile), colleges and universities are using Java, and teaching Java in highschool gives them a jump on university/college.

Good colleges are doing what they should be doing and using a variety of languages. So far, I've had to use Java, C, C++, Scheme and assembly, and I'm now nearing the end of my second year.

My current programming course is completely C. It's rather difficult to modify a Linux kernel using Java when all the kernel code is written in C.