[Edu-sig] re: book: Head First Java

[Arthur]

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.

Why have they come to be students of Java?  Are we assuming coercion of some
sort?

>They'ev   put a lot of effort into the book based firmly on >its premise
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.

> 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,
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