Re: JavaSchools (was Re: Colon Operator: Superfluous Syntax?)

[David Haley <dchaley@...>]

On this day of 03/15/2007 04:45 AM, Roberto Ierusalimschy saw fit to scribe:
> I am not sure why, but this comment reminded me of an interesting text
> that I read recently:
> 
>   http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/ThePerilsofJavaSchools.html

Not to go completely off-topic here, but since you mentioned it...

I can see the case (although I'm not completely convinced) for Java not
being able to teach pointers, because a lot of the pointerness is hidden
from you. But, I am baffled as to why he thinks that Java has no
recursion in it and that one cannot teach recursion in Java. Time and
time again I've written recursive code in Java. You can even do all
kinds of interesting recursion in OOP using objects that call each other
in a hierarchy (or call the same method but on related objects; it's
still recursion). Can anybody explain why he claims that Java has no
recursion?

My impression is that by attacking Java, he is killing the messenger
instead of the message. The "JavaSchools" he refers to are the problem
in the sense that they embody a certain philosophy of teaching in
general, not because they teach Java /per se/.
Maybe it's true that it's very hard to write much C without
understanding pointers, whereas you can write a lot of Java without
*really* grokking pointers. That's still no reason to say that Java as a
language is easy and stupid, that you can't tell when someone wrote a
really nice piece of software, merely because some people happen to
teach it in a simplified way.

I mean, that would be like saying Lua is stupid. :-) (After all, it
abstracts away from pointers! Gasp!)

Basically, the issue I have with Joel Spolsky's articles is that he
often goes out to attack a certain philosophy, often quite rightly IMHO,
but ends up using a brush far too wide, and thereby takes a swipe at not
only the intended target(s), but also anybody who shares something with
those targets. It's somewhat similar to his comments about CS grad
school: just because some people in some grad schools don't care about
practical implementation, he concludes that all grad school is useless
as far as being a competent programmer is concerned.

/me gets off the soap-box

Cheers,
- David

-- 
~David-Haley
http://david.the-haleys.org