JEP 330 (original) (raw)

Cay Horstmann cay.horstmann at sjsu.edu
Thu May 31 21:19:58 UTC 2018

Hi Jon,

as it happens, teaching Java to beginners is something that I do a lot. In twenty years, I have never met any beginner who was seriously struggling with javac vs. java. There are many other issues that confuse beginners, starting with public, static, void, main, and args. As I point out in my blog, that confusion could be remedied by a better launcher that is willing to instantiate a class. That would be a large win for beginners.

Also, beginners often start with an IDE that hides javac and java from them for a while. When they get to the point where they use the command line tools, they have probably already encountered multiple classes.

If the motivation of the JEP is to provide shebang support, sure. But from a teaching perspective, I don't see how it is a win.

Cheers,

Cay

Le 31/05/2018 à 11:54, Jonathan Gibbons a écrit :

Cay, The intent of the feature, as relates to easing the Java learning curve, is to assist in the first few "baby steps" that some folk might take when starting to learn Java. The intent is that for folk starting out from scratch, learning to use one command (java) is simpler than learning to use two (java and javac).  Once they are familiar with using java to run simple small programs, then they can progress to using javac and java for programs using many files.  Then, the next possible step on the ladder is to learn the jar command to make an executable. If you are teaching folk at a level where they are already more familiar with command-line tools, then yes, you may want to skip the ability to use the Java launcher to execute single-file source code programs. -- Jon

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Cay S. Horstmann | http://horstmann.com | mailto:cay at horstmann.com

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