| Structured programming in Java (1998) | |||||||||||||||
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| We argue that for computing majors, it is better to use a `why' approach to teaching programming than a `how' approach; this involves (among other things) teaching structured programming before progressing to higher-level styles such as object-oriented programming. We also argue that, once it has been decided to teach structured programming, Java is a reasonable language to choose for doing so. Keywords: Java, structured programming, object-oriented programming, teaching. 1 Introduction Last year at this workshop, McLaughlin 3 presented a paper entitled Oh, by the way: Java is object-oriented. He observed that many institutions were switching to Java as a first programming language, without capitalizing on the object-oriented (OO) features of Java. McLaughlin argued that this was a Bad Thing: `if Java becomes the core language then OO must be taught as the central theme of the development curriculum'. In this paper, I would like to present the opposite point of view. I submit that... | |||||||||||||||
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