[BigMike7319]

Im browsing some of the posts in the java forum, to see if mabey I can give some advice or learn something new and just read a post from a high school kid learning some fairly impressive java stuff.........im a senior in College and I am just dumbfounded that these courses are being offered in High School, which is great, with the way that technology runs everything, but still........wow!! Im 35, i remember when the very first apples came into our jr. highschool.......with the HUGE floppy discs that were the size of a 45 (most of you youngins dont know or wont remember what at 45 is :+)). Wow technology has really come along way in a short period of time if you think about even how small pc;s were 10 years ago, vs how much bigger and more powerfull they are now.

[BetaWar]

Yes, it is amazing what they teach us in High School, but at the same point it is utterly depressing how scattered the learning is. In my school we start out learning how to use basic things like word and excell (tech 10), in tech 20 we learn the super basics of C++ (though it is only C that is taught in the class, the school is just too dumb to understand the differences), in tech 30 we learn the basics of PHP (as if people are taking programming to learn how to make websites), and then there is AP Tech AB, in which we learn Java.

I find this very annoying because the schools don't take into account what the students want to do with their lives. I for one loath Java, and would much rather be learning C/C++, but considering that there aren't any higher level C/C++ classes at my school I am screwed in that aspect, and am forced to teach myself the language. This becomes fairly difficult when you have to keep up with school work and have a ton of things that need to be done. But, at least I will be able to choose what I want to study most of in a year, then maybe I wil be getting something useful done at school.

[William_Wilson]

VB6.0 was the limit of my programming in highschool, unless you count html and javascript

I don't think you're giving it it's due respect BW, Java is not the greatest language, but it is easy to teach AND easy to learn as far as basics go and the structure can help to learn anything else.
Learning any language builds a foundation for knowing if you like programming or not and it really is up to each person to teach themselves other languages to determine what they like best. I've gone through more than a dozen university programming courses and I've yet to learn anything useful without teaching it to myself.

In my opinion highschool doesn't teach you much and is presented all wrong. All it is meant to do is start your abilities to learn many subjects at once. By touching the surface in this respect it leads into the extensive multi-topic learning that University or College will do.

[BetaWar]

Quote

In my opinion highschool doesn't teach you much and is presented all wrong

That I would have to agree with. The classes tend to jump all over the place.

Quote

I don't think you're giving it it's due respect BW, Java is not the greatest language, but it is easy to teach AND easy to learn as far as basics go and the structure can help to learn anything else.

It is mostly that my current passion is trying to create things through C++ and learning as much about that as I can, and Java gets in the way.

I heard this (or something like this) "C lets you shoot yourself in the foot, C++ makes it harder, but when you succeed you blow your whole leg off." Taking that a little further, you come to Java, which won't allow you to shoot yourself in the foot, or even touch a dangerous object. This makes things very annoying to try and do.

In C++ you can overload all but like 4 operators. In Java, well, you aren't allowed to overload anything. C++ just makes things very straight forward (at least from my point of view), and allows you to do anything you want to. It is has been used for such a long time for a reason.

If it is okay I think that this should be featured. Any seconds?

[William_Wilson]

Quote

It is mostly that my current passion is trying to create things through C++ and learning as much about that as I can, and Java gets in the way.

I heard this (or something like this) "C lets you shoot yourself in the foot, C++ makes it harder, but when you succeed you blow your whole leg off." Taking that a little further, you come to Java, which won't allow you to shoot yourself in the foot, or even touch a dangerous object. This makes things very annoying to try and do.

In C++ you can overload all but like 4 operators. In Java, well, you aren't allowed to overload anything. C++ just makes things very straight forward (at least from my point of view), and allows you to do anything you want to. It is has been used for such a long time for a reason.

If it is okay I think that this should be featured. Any seconds?

All fair points and I completely understand, I took a web development course hoping to learn something about server side languages, they taught us what PHP stood for and moved on, lol.

This could turn into a good discussion if featured, but it might fit better in the CS instead of CL.

[BetaWar]

Agreed. Moved and Featured

[abgorn]

BigMike7319, on 12 Oct, 2008 - 10:25 AM, said:

Im browsing some of the posts in the java forum, to see if mabey I can give some advice or learn something new and just read a post from a high school kid learning some fairly impressive java stuff.........

Was it me? It's ok to say yes.

[Moonbat]

You guys are lucky. I don't have any programming classes at all in my school, beyond the basic HTML class called "Web Design". We aren't even going to cover Javascript or PHP. I would kill for a C++ class, even if all we learn is if-else and loops.

By the way, as far as Advanced Placement Computer Science classes go, they aren't offered in our school at all. Nationwide, AP Computer Science AB is going to be discontinued. I was even planning to try and take an AP CS class at another school in my senior year

[homemade-jam]

The only teaching we ever got taught/offered at my school is ECDL word, powerpoint etc. and once when I was 11 I was badly introduced into the Excel VB iirc

[BetaWar]

Quote

By the way, as far as Advanced Placement Computer Science classes go, they aren't offered in our school at all. Nationwide, AP Computer Science AB is going to be discontinued. I was even planning to try and take an AP CS class at another school in my senior year

Yes, I know it is going to be discontinued, I just got lucky enough to be in the last year it is taught, though I find the class to be very boring. Hopefully that will speed up as we get further along.

Basically all we have covered thus far in the year is Variables, functions (methods), classes, references (pointers), comments, arrays, and some interface basics. It is likely that you could learn all of that and more in less time on your own. In fact you could probably get quite a head start on programming in various languages if you take some time and read through DIC tutorials in the section you are wanting to learn about.

Hopefully, one day, schools will come up with some program where they teach an actual language in depth and allow students to choose from a number of different languages where the classes go something like so:
<Language> 10 - Intro to <Language>
<Language> 20 - Programming
<Language> 30 - Advanced Programming
<Language> 40 - Advanced Application of <Language> in the real world
... and so on

With something like:
Programming 00 - Introductory sampler to languages
So that people can sample a few languages before they choose to go into a certain one.

This thing that bugs me with AP Comp is that my school has allowed Freshmen/ Sophomores into it (even though they haven't taken the prequisites required for the class, and are lost more than half the time; or messing aroun on something that is totally unrelated to the class). It my school had only allowed people who were qualified to take the class it would be far smaller (like half the size) but we would likely be 2-3x further than we currently are.

[gabehabe]

Moonbat, on 12 Oct, 2008 - 08:12 PM, said:

You guys are lucky. I don't have any programming classes at all in my school, beyond the basic HTML class called "Web Design". We aren't even going to cover Javascript or PHP. I would kill for a C++ class, even if all we learn is if-else and loops.

We didn't even have that. The most advanced thing we did in 6th form was a little bit of Excel.

w00t.

We had to do a little bit of "web design" in year 12, but everything was in design view of DreamWeaver. No code whatsoever.

I had to get into it though, so I used HTML CSS and Javascript.

They even had a go at me for doing what I wasn't supposed to do, because I should have been copy/pasting from Wikipedia.

Wow, I live in such a technological country.

[AdamR]

preach

Best we were offered was taking ICT from 10-12 where all i learned was stuff i knew when i was in year 7. (being 13)

No college course where available what-so-ever when i was looking at hitting college, (being 5 years ago).

Go Go Gadget England!

[markhazlett9]

Moonbat, on 12 Oct, 2008 - 12:12 PM, said:

You guys are lucky. I don't have any programming classes at all in my school, beyond the basic HTML class called "Web Design". We aren't even going to cover Javascript or PHP. I would kill for a C++ class, even if all we learn is if-else and loops.

By the way, as far as Advanced Placement Computer Science classes go, they aren't offered in our school at all. Nationwide, AP Computer Science AB is going to be discontinued. I was even planning to try and take an AP CS class at another school in my senior year

I agree with you guys being lucky. I didn't have any programming or any computer related classes at all in High School. Definitely something I would like to see more of.

[KYA]

I spent all afternoon trying to figure out why a package that is supposed to be part of the jdk wasn't there. Extending dependencies that no information is available on is going to be the death of me. I took some java in high school, it was a really crappy class. I'm glad some schools still teach some programming classes so people can experiment and see if they want to major or have a career in the field.

[Nykc]

I almost wish I was in highschool. We learned Typing I & II - yes on this device called a typewriter.