Gary McGovern wrote:
> 
> 11/01/02 20:19:11, John Hinsley <jhinsley at telinco.co.uk> wrote:
> 
> >M206 is an undergrad course run by the Open University (UK based, but
> >available pretty much anywhere) which uses Learning Works (a "teaching"
> >Smalltalk based, IIRC on an early (3.1 ish?) Visual Works) to teach OO
> >programming. I don't think I'm entirely alone in thinking that they
> >should use Squeak instead and adopt Mark Guzdial's book as the main
> >text.
> 
> Quite correct, after M206 students are left high and dry without a knowledge
> of a real environment that you can produce things with. At least with the OU
> Java and C++ courses Borland is used and students can carry on with it
> afterwards.

Well, they can given that they're prepared to use closed source tools
(and, IIRC, Borland's C++ stuff is only available for Windows).

> 
> Mark Guzdial's book is higher level book with an heuristic style of teaching,
> I wouldn't have like to have done that to begin with. M206 is nuts and bolts
> Smalltalk and an easier place to start.

I only said that Mark's book should be the main text. It'd be easy
enough to supplement it with simple(ish) iteration exercises. Given all
that, and where the OU M206 folk were starting from 5 years or so ago,
the use of Learning Works probably made good sense. As did their
devoutly held view that Java (and Windows) was the one true religion!
> 
> I should add that there was an interview with Alan in which he is supposed to
> have said what was wrong with Java, but that was edited out because of space.
> (The explanation of why it was edited out couldn't have been any shorter than
> the edited parts themselves. That the following course from M206 is Java is
> probably the main reason).

LOL!


Cheers

John
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