<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "> <br><div><div>On Jan 17, 2012, at 8:27 AM, Matthias Felleisen wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; min-height: 14px; ">For the book itself, I now think I took the wrong approach. While it is theoretically arranged properly -- especially the decision to model information with class based data w/o creating methods -- it doesn't suit the psychology of most students and teachers.</div></blockquote><div><br></div>Students (and teachers, including me) want to be able to actually DO something as soon as possible.  I liked the approach in HtDP: here's a data type, here's how to write functions using that data type; here's another data type, and here's how to write functions using it.</div><div><br></div><div>The last time I taught a Java-based first-year course, I started with Strings and how to call methods on them;</div><div>then how to write static methods with String parameters;</div><div>then numbers and how to write static methods with numeric parameters;</div><div>then classes with fields and how to write static methods with parameters of such types;</div><div>then non-static methods; then conditionals on built-in types;</div><div>then polymorphism via conditionals;</div><div>then polymorphism via interface inheritance;</div><div>then class composition and how to write methods on composed classes;</div><div>then recursive classes and how to write methods on them;</div><div>then Java collection classes and looping over them; etc.</div><div><br></div>I think this was a lot more concrete and fulfilling than building a whole lot of different kinds of classes, through polymorphism, class composition, and recursion, before ever writing a method.<br><br><div> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0; "><div>Stephen Bloch</div><div><a href="mailto:sbloch@adelphi.edu">sbloch@adelphi.edu</a></div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"> </div><br></body></html>