[Edu-sig] Re: Best approach to teaching OOP and graphics

[Dan Crosta]

On Fri, 25 Mar 2005 ajsiegel at optonline.net wrote:
>
> But using the metaphor of geometric objects already *is* the
> canonical way of introducing OOP.
>

Slightly tangent: here, in our Object Oriented Programming/Algorithms
class (the curriculum of which I'm not a great fan, I should say) uses the
Person -> Student, Person -> Professor paradigm for introducing object
orientation. I don't think it's a great example, but I struggle to think
of any better. I sort of think that graphics might not be a good
introduction, since it requires a lot of associated stuff to understand
(graphics contexts, how images work or how to draw on-screen)... and you
could say "just use this boilerplate for now, you'll get to understand it
later" but I feel like that's just as likely to confuse as to provide a
good example.

As my prof said: "if you ever figure out how students actually learn to
program, be sure to let me know..." :)

dsc