JEP 495 Question

[Archie Cobbs]

On Fri, Nov 8, 2024 at 9:24 AM Ethan McCue <ethan at mccue.dev> wrote:

> The *goal* is seems more akin to "improve the experience of learning and
> teaching java as a first language".
>

You make good points - but that kind-of implies that we need to first
conduct a pedagogical debate to establish what we think is the "correct"
way to teach the Java programming language. Only then would we be able to
properly design features to support that goal. Of course I'm putting
"correct" in air quotes because that's probably not a resolvable debate.

I don't want to have that debate (I'm not a teacher), but I can speak from
personal experience. I understand things best when I can focus on learning
one self-consistent, well-defined layer of abstraction at a time. Once each
layer is mastered, you can then have the "big reveal" of the next layer
underneath ("opening the hood)" and then learn how that next layer supports
the one above that you already know and understand. Then, rinse & repeat.

You can also go in the other direction, i.e., from the bottom up. For
example, you might learn digital logic, then counters & flip flops, then
adding and shifting, then instruction fetch, then CPU's, then assembly
language, then memory management, then operating systems, then C/C++, then
Java, etc. etc.

The "on-ramp" metaphor instead implies you are learning one big layer of
abstraction by gradually reducing the number of "simplifying tricks", so
the complexity increases step-by-step. The layer of abstraction you start
with is a simplified mirage that keeps changing over time. I'm sure that
can work too, but it's a different way of teaching and learning & because
it seems weird to me it probably works better in practice :)

I'm definitely NOT anti-JEP 495. My point is simply that if the goal is
"improve the experience of learning and teaching java as a first language"
then that implies some presumptions about how that teaching will be
conducted, and it's worth pondering those presumptions. If all the CS
teachers of the world are united in saying "this is how we do it" then
that's probably sufficient.

-Archie

-- 
Archie L. Cobbs
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