Java: not the best language to teach at schools?

"Computer Science Education: Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?" dogs Java as the one and only programming language to teach but does include it as one of 5 languages recommended languages to learn (C, C++, LISP and Ada are the other 4).

Personally, I'd wish they work on a better programming language(s) to teach the right concepts rather than trying to create a better hi-tech vocational courses based on the most desired languages by employers. It's unfortunate that people get hired based on their specific language skills rather than understanding concepts and ability solve problems. Sigh...

Copyright 2007, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

BlueJ: programming environment

"BlueJ: Teaching Java" seems like a great way to start programming but it seems to help only the peripheral aspect of programming (not visual programming as I had anticipated).

Copyright 2007, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved

Usability and better programming

The two articles seem to go together:
"Race Is On to Woo Next-Gen Developer"
and
"Sci-Fi: A New Kind of OS"

OS proposed is HAL-9000 like tool which adapts to your working style and filter your tool selections based on how you work. I would think it should be per application level all coordinated by OS. With hypervisor, you can even do it across multiple OSes!

The next-gen developer tooling: make programming easier especially in the area of dynamic languages. Things like CASE tools were to do just that in the 80's [and 90's] but they never really took off (i-Logix Statemate was the closest thing to such an ideal but its price made it unnoticed). Dynamic languages like Smalltalk should have done just what they are talking about in the article but due to licensing and price, it never had a chance. Java [and Eclipse] have the potential but it seems all too haphazard [not something I can really put my finger on -- just my feelings].

See also eweek's "The Future of Programming: Less Is More" especially about LOP (language oriented programming) where you can mix and match different languages in one programming environment. Not too far from what I've been blogging.

So you mix it all together and you get adaptive programming environment where you get prompts and suggestions on where to go or what to do next and use different languages as appropriate to the problem you want solved (even suggesting an alternative translation(s) to a different language(s)).

Copyright 2006, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Beauty in simplicity

"The beauty of Simplicity" hits at why Google is so popular: simple yet functional. Same with iPod: clean interace for handling thousands if not millions of music in one box.

I believe the same about programming: if things can be made simple (like Stagecast) while being very powerful like C/C++, I believe that programming would become as common as googlers and podcasters. I think Smalltalk is a good start but by being pure VM based (like Java), it has some limits which can done better if it was more like Forth with machine code level access to the hardware. Security issues can be mitigated by using the hypervisor or virtualization technologies to isolate programmers from corrupting other partitions (LPAR or logical partition is what IBM likes to call the individual instance of virtualized "machine" -- not to be confused with virtual machine or VM of Smalltalk and Java).