[Edu-sig] re: book: Head First Java
Arthur
ajs@optonline.net
Tue, 24 Jun 2003 22:50:56 -0500
Jason writes -
> The sun is shining
Finally.
>- I'll happily quible with you ---
Always welcome a good quibble.
>Yes the Net is full of curious people, but not necessarily >for whatever
you or I may be doing or curious about.
Not sure what you mean.
But, no, traffic on the PyGeo site, is not burdening the infrastructure - if
that point is to the point.
>They may be curious about something else and in ways >we'd never expect...
I think the authors were perhaps >just exercising a healthy reality check
on their own >enthusiasms and assumptions.
Reality checks are for sissies ;)
>Trying not to project onto the student.
Why have they come to be students of Java? Are we assuming coercion of some
sort?
>They'ev put a lot of effort into the book based firmly on >its premise
that learning by doing exploring play design >etc is the way to go. But
they go to creative lengths to >avoid dogma and reach for the aha!! quality
of >programming.
That sounds right to me. I keep trying to say that learning to program was,
to me, an experience. Not a particularly coherent one at that, really.
I have a jock side. And the experience, amazingly, seems to have drawn on
that part of my personality. That, of course, defies lots of expectations -
most notably, my own.
A book can either hope to be a reference source, or advice from the
initiated. But in the end you can no more hope to learn how to program from
a book as you can hope to learn to play - say golf - from a book.
> I say this becuase I've been browsing "Head First Java" in my local
Barnes&Noble a few times since I first posted here.. >The more I look at it,
the more impressed >I think I am ;-) I'll wager it's fast on its way to
becoming
> a new 'classic' and a best seller . It's cartoony and witty, but benefits
greatly from the facts that its own content is >the >result of the two
authors' direct experience and collaboration. Java is scary and verbose,
but powerful >and ubiquitous. >"Head First" really tries to tackle ideas
first, and let the syntax follow. But it gets into some serious work soon
Not sure we are quibbling really. But I will bet that no one without a real
healthy motivation to actually learn Java will take much away from the
book - nonetheless and in any case.
I guess I am quibbling, if at all, with the hyperbole that the authors have
discovered a technique to teach the uninterested.
I advocate being uninterested in the uninterested.
Bastard that I am.
What they *can* do,at best, is not harm an existing interest with
formalities, and overemphasis on terminology and definitions of terms, and
abstracting too far from the heart of the matter. Which is something I
cannot attempt to define. But I know when I see.
Art