Crap.

You can, and I have noticed it happening more, easily fudge up a procedural programming paradigm in Java.

Static methods appear as procedures and functions.

In CP2A, this is exactly what is starting to happen. Instead of building on the OO crap, stuff is being done in public static void main(String[] args), which is all procedural.

This is fine, but why bother teaching OO under Java first, and then this after? Just skip the middle man and start with the procedural stuff. I’d rather have done Pascal again… nah, just kidding.

I have spent the last 9 years teaching. I know how to teach. I haven’t always managed to have the best results, but I have a solid understanding of educational theories and principles. I have taught a little bit of programming, somewhat unsuccessfully, although I have written programs of one sort or another consistently over the past 20 years. Most of my programming has not been for commercial purposes, in fact quite a lot of it has been programming for programming’s sake.

This year has so far been a huge eye-opener for me. I returned to study after a 9-year hiatus, and it was 4 years since my previous study in Computer Science/Engineering. As mentioned before, I haven’t exactly done nothing related to Computer Science in that time, but haven’t been in a formal education setting related to programming in about 13 years.

One of the things that stopped me from returning to study was that all three Universities in the city I live in have only taught Java in the introductory courses for the past god-knows-how-many-years. I’d tried a couple of times to learn Java from various books, but always returned to python, or other more productive languages. I’d studied C, and done quite well at that, a long time ago, so it wasn’t that I was afraid of “real” languages, but more that Java just had no appeal for me. I think the first time I tried I gave up at “primitives and objects are totally different.” I certainly remember thinking “You are joking!?” when this came up again at the start of this year when I learned Java.

So, now I’m studying full-time at Flinders University, doing Computer Science. A lot of what I’m about to say may be perceived to be somewhat critical of that institution, but please bear in mind that some of what I’m studying is useful, advanced and interesting. It’s just that some of it isn’t.

The introductory programming topic is all Java. But not even real Java. See, they are using the fantastic IDE called BlueJ, which removes a lot of the complexity of Object Oriented programming. By fantastic, I mean fucking shit. The whole point of programming is that it is somewhat complex, but I’ll get to that later. So this BlueJ thing takes a different approach. Instead of writing code, and seeing how that works, the first stuff you tend to do is graphical, and you instantiate classes by right-clicking on them, and selecting from a menu. In fact, for the first week’s work (or the first day, since I did the course intensively), I don’t think we wrote a line of code at all.

And the students who suffered through this, and the running of the same topic in normal semester last year, are really feeling it now. We are (almost) doing some real programming, and in many cases these students haven’t grasped what I consider to be the basics of programming. They haven’t totally understood selection and iteration, let alone recursion.

I think Object Oriented programming is a great paradigm. I mean, I wrote an Object Oriented chess game (without the artificial intelligence) in less than 10 hours of coding time. That’s a game, complete with GUI, that allows users to click-click to move pieces. It checks validity of moves, redraws the screen, and so on. Doing it procedurally would really suck.

But I went into that with a solid grounding in imperative programming. I learned how to construct loops and selection statements in BASIC back in the 80s. I used to criticise BASIC and Pascal, but I think I’m starting to see the value in having those type of languages, the ones that are really limited and limiting, but allow you to learn in a safe environment. By safe I mean less-threatening, because you can still, if you try hard enough, break things.

I think more importantly though, the first language people learn should be interpreted. For starters, it removes the barrier to entry of having to understand the compile/execute cycle. More so, it provides immediate feedback on what you type in.

Back to educational-land. I have studied a significant amount of Psychology, and know one thing. The sooner after an action you receive feedback, the more likely you will take away the lesson from the situation. If you type in a command, it will fail immediately, and you can then try to get it right.

Interpreted languages don’t need to be restricted to type-in-command : get-feedback styles of programming. They can be used in batch mode, but being able to experiment with the code as you go along makes a big difference to learning how stuff works. I’ll repeat the example I used last November. When I had a Commodore 128D (think of a C=64, but with a separate keyboard, a larger case, a floppy drive, and more memory: 128kb!)I remember at first being stumped by the error message that appeared when you moved the cursor up over the READY. prompt and pressed return.

OUT OF DATA ERROR.

(Apologies for the all caps, that was the way it was back then…)

It wasn’t until I started programming on that machine, which had a low entry cost since there was a built-in basic interpreter which was basically the access point to the OS. When you deal with data structures on C= BASIC, you use a command called READ, which works in conjunction with DATA. Because you could sometimes have a READ when there wasn’t a corresponding DATA statement (or argument), then you would run out of data. And the error message shown above would appear.

The first time I saw the error message on one of my own programs something clicked. I finally understood what the computer meant when I did the whole READY. thing. But more than that, I realised that computers are in many senses contextually insensitive. The computer had no idea that I wasn’t writing a program. It was inside the BASIC interpreter, therefore it was a program.

That’s the key. With computers, you need to spell stuff out instruction by instruction. In the early days, this was done with setting switches to reflect binary values. As we go on, we abstract this process. Next it was machine code, then assembly language, then higher-level languages.

In some ways, you lose something at each level. What you gain, however, in most cases exceeds that which you lose. I’d hate to try to write anything significant in assembler, let alone machine code. Being able to grasp the full idea that you are working on, being able to fit one concept in a screen, and not having to worry about things that are at a higher or lower level of abstraction enables you to better write bug-free code.

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It is possible that the current limit of reasonable abstraction will be extended in the future - natural language processing and diagram-based programming tools may someday become the norm. At this point in time, however, syntax is still important, perhaps even more so than semantics. Programmers must still spell every keyword correctly. Compilers and interpreters aren’t smart enough to determine which else clause goes with which if determinant without some sort of structure, be it braces or indentation. They can’t just guess, and get it right, nor can they make sound judgements based on context.

So, it’s still important for beginning programmers to learn how to structure a loop, or several types of loop. More important, IMHO, than knowing about objects and inheritance. Yet the current trend towards OO as the be-all and end-all of learning coding means that these ideas are given precedence.

I think the saddest reflection of this is that students are not capable or interested in advanced programming topics. With 120 students at Flinders University doing Computer Programming 2A, this drops to 10 doing Programming Language Concepts. And PLC is going to make those 10 much better programmers. Because it teaches them about the structure and interpretation of computer programs. Not just how to knock together a few classes that kind-of work and get the job done.

But I rant.

No need to elaborate.

Even better was the last lot of school reports. Ever.

Now it is time to rant and rave about the reporting process(es) in schools. Or maybe that will be after I’ve finished…

Most recently, this is the last time I will write reports. Something I have always despised, and I won’t miss it one iota.

I’ve also had the last Year Level Meeting, last Student Free Day (those are pretty good, but), and last time I have to submit student work for moderation.

In three days, I’ll have my last teaching lesson. That’s a big one!

And then, at the end of next week, my last day.

Roll on, last day!

It has some differences, and could be an excellent program, but it just does lots of things (IMHO) wrong.

For instance, it allows you to place a dimension on a line, and then change it. But it doesn’t actually change the length of the line. If it did this one thing, giving it parametrically controllable dimensions, then it would do most of what I want. Instead, I need to create a line or box, (change tools to) place a dimension, (change tools again to) resize it until it is close enough to the size I want.

To make it a bit better to use coming from Inventor, I set up ‘D’ as a shortcut key for Dimension, and F5/6 for Previous View/Iso View. Much better for my muscle memory!

It uses a different paradigm than Inventor, rather than using a series of parts, it really is just a sketch. Having said that, here is an accurate representation of my house. Accurate in some ways, not all.

And the best thing over Inventor? It runs native on OS X.

Working on anything while VMWare is running is bad news - everything in the system slows down to a crawl, especially during the startup phase, but even whilst running. I used to be able to switch around with ease, and even though Inventor was sometimes a little laggy, it was quite responsive. Now, I need to wait seconds for every operation in Inventor to complete (which may be a Network licensing issue, since the same thing appears to be true of Windows machines on the network, too), and it affects my OS X software, too.

Finally, I had a crash today, where VMWare shut down. I think I’d saved all of my work, but I can’t be arsed waiting for it all to load up again to check. I’ve only got 20 mins to work on the stuff I need to use VMWare for, and I think I’ll just do something else instead of waiting for half of that for it to boot up.

I don’t know if it is an OS X issue, a VMWare installation issue, an Inventor issue or a VM image issue. I only need to keep using Inventor for a couple of weeks, and I have to use Access to write my last lot of school reports. After that, I may be able to remove VMWare and Parallels from my system entirely.

Actually, I think I’ll do a complete reinstall of OS X and all of my applications when I get Leopard. And perhaps I’ll have several partitions: OS, Applications and Data. That way I can have separate backups, that are restorable easily.

And one of the tasks I need to do is create a series of worksheets to enable the other guys in my learning area to teach the stuff I am an expert in - most notably AutoDesk Inventor. I generally just teach from my head. I provide the kids with some sheets with drawings on them, sometimes go through a couple of the steps on the projector, and then just wander around helping out those that are stuck.

This is a fine way to teach, for me, anyway. It gives the kids a heap of independence, and it means by part way through the semester, the kids are pretty close to being able to work without my assistance. Setting relief lessons is a piece of cake (Continue with your <whatever> project). It also makes my classroom mostly fun - I can actually often get other work done while teaching.

So, not being able to rely on there being a specialist CAD teacher next year, I’ve had to start writing explanatory worksheets for the kids, most notably for the new Year 8 course that is running next year. I’ve done this in the past, on a Windows PC (which Inventor requires), and using OGrabIt, a screen capture application that is okay.

But not as good as the built-in screen capture with OS X. I’m finding my workflow is much better with VMWare open, running Inventor, and Pages open on the same screen. I just do the CAD steps, press ⇧⌘3 at each step, and I have a series of files I can then crop to size.

Even better, if I have a static screenshot, I can use ⇧⌘4 to grab just the area, or press the space-bar afterwards to grab a window. This was possible with OGrabIt, but required switching of applications, and, IIRC, only allowed for grabbing of the screen to the clipboard. Meaning a paste was required after each step of a process.

Of course, if you hold down Ctrl, you can grab to the clipboard in OS X, too.

The next thing that makes my life easier is being able to work in Pages, rather than Word. Word has these nasty habits like making objects jump around when trying to fine-tune their position. Pages’ guidelines are a bit annoying at times, when it tries to align the centre of two similarly sized objects instead of the left-hand side, but at least when you use the keyboard arrows to move stuff, it doesn’t reach a certain point, and then on the next press jump right up to the very top of the page. I’m fairly sure I blogged about this in the past, it is possibly the most fucked-up-and-annoying thing about Word.

Pages is a lot faster, too. No more waiting for spinning beachballs. The only bad stuff is related to positional incompatibilities when converting back to Word, which I haven’t really checked out that much yet. That won’t really be my problem, though. I’ll give my colleagues a PDF, which they can use to print out, and if they need to make any major edits, they’ll also have a Word document version, but then it is up to them.

Having said all of that, it still takes quite a long time to generate a worksheet for students. I spent at least 3 hours today on one task, that will probably take the kids about 45 minutes to complete. Still, it’s not as long as if I’d used Windows+Word - the rule of thumb there is 10x the student time.

See, my Year 12 IT Studies kids are supposed to be handing in work, or have handed it in already. I have to submit my results to SSABSA tomorrow, and at this stage I don’t have anything that even slightly resembles a full marks book.

I have found this to be the worst aspect of teaching. Trying to get all of the required work from a cohort of students.

It makes me feel like a bad teacher. Why can’t I manage to get all of the students, or even a majority of them, to submit all of the required tasks? Am I doing something wrong? I know there are stacks of things I would approach from a different direction if I were teaching the subject again, or if I could do it over. But surely I m not single-handedly responsible for their lack of work.

Having had discussions with other teachers at my school makes me think not. One of the Maths teachers mentioned she had 3 out of 17 students who have submitted all of their tasks. A Science teacher had similar things to say of his class.

At some stage, students need to stand up and take responsibility for their own actions. Regardless of excuses they make (the computer network is down, or whatever), I have continually reminded my class of the tasks they have not completed. And yet with some students, I have received no more than 20% of their assessable work. And these are the very same students who have not attended at all in the “extra week” I have put on for them, since I was absent all of last week.

Perhaps I just need to go “fuck it”, and hand out a whole bunch of failing grades.

Of course, that would only result in me getting hauled through the admin team’s offices, wanting to know why so many students scored so badly. So I spend countless hours giving students way more help than I would really like, and quite a few of my website projects look fairly similar.

Stiff shit. I’m over this whole thing. I am just killing days until the year finishes.