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.
They'ev put a lot of effort into the book based firmly on >its premise
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,
Why have they come to be students of Java? Are we assuming coercion of some sort? 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. 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