I think this is the class that inspired the infamous "Java is the SUV of programming languages" entry that got slashdotted a few years ago. Phil said that the students who picked J2EE all had to drop the class - the workload was too great for them to keep up.
At first, I was surprised to hear that MIT students were having trouble completing a program in Java, until I saw what was required and the time they'd have to complete it. I wasn't sure if I could do it in the time alloted, even without carrying a full courseload, and I knew java reasonably well at the time.
This post, along with Paul Graham's comments about Lisp, really changed the way I think about programming. Kind of like the JFK statement about seeing things as they never were, and asking yourself "why not?"
Why the hell should it take so long to go from an idea to an implementation. I was just accepting the achingly boring typing that Java had inflicted on my life as part of the cost of writing a program. Time to realize that I can't implement a chat server in half a day, and ask myself "why not?"
Anyway, I think that even the students who have to drop this course learn a valuable lesson, as long as they struggle with it for a while.
At first, I was surprised to hear that MIT students were having trouble completing a program in Java, until I saw what was required and the time they'd have to complete it. I wasn't sure if I could do it in the time alloted, even without carrying a full courseload, and I knew java reasonably well at the time.
This post, along with Paul Graham's comments about Lisp, really changed the way I think about programming. Kind of like the JFK statement about seeing things as they never were, and asking yourself "why not?"
Why the hell should it take so long to go from an idea to an implementation. I was just accepting the achingly boring typing that Java had inflicted on my life as part of the cost of writing a program. Time to realize that I can't implement a chat server in half a day, and ask myself "why not?"
Anyway, I think that even the students who have to drop this course learn a valuable lesson, as long as they struggle with it for a while.