Many places in USA, including where I teach, teach Java without classes. 
Well if there is time at the end of the of the course they do show 
objects.

Try to do the following simple beginner assignment in Java:

	Prompt the user for two numbers and print out their sum.

You will discover that using the command line you have to read & parse 
the input character by character and manually convert the input to a 
number. You also have to deal with exceptions, streams, static etc. Java 
input is really too complex for raw beginners.

Now try the same problem in Squeak. How many weeks (months) earlier 
could you assign the problem in a Squeak class than in a Java class?


On Wednesday, June 26, 2002, at 11:00  PM, Richard A. O'Keefe wrote:

> Stephane Ducasse <ducasse at iam.unibe.ch> wrote:
> 	I know. In some places in France they are at "teaching Java without
> 	classes"...May be pascal is better :)
> 	
> There is a certain well-known data structures & algorithms textbook
> which used to use Pascal and has now appeared in a Java edition.
>
> Sort of.
>
> All methods are 'static'.
> So they don't show the keyword 'static' in their code.
>
> They think indentation is better, so they don't show
> the curly braces either.
>
> But it's Java...
>
>
>
>

----
Roger Whitney              Mathematical & Computer Sciences Department
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