11 October 2004 - java_dev (original) (raw)

Since we've been on the topic of teaching styles and so on, I thought I'd post (read: bitch about) what happened to me the other day.

I'm currently covering JSP, JDOM and XML in my Server Side Programming class; I don't really get it, and I was way behind (but that's not the issue here.. I mostly think i just need to spend a few hours with the API docs now..).

I showed up to class the other day to find that no one else is there. "Sweet!" I think to myself; "I can have my lecturers undivided attention and really get this stuff sorted out." .. I proceed to sit down with her and she basically gives me all the answers to the excersises without explaining anything. Any questions are answered with something along the lines of "We'll cover that in a minute; Just type this." or a direct quote from the worksheet she's looking at (which may or may not be relevant to the question i've asked) .. So now I could probably write basic XML creating programs via cut & paste, but I wouldn't know wtf I was doing.

And then she tells me that:

Example 1:

Element anElement = new Element("rootElement");
anElement.addContent(new Element("childElement").addContent("Content"));


Is exactly the same as:

Example 2:

Element anElement = new Element("rootElement");
Element anotherElement = new Element("childElement");
anotherElement.addContent("Content");
anElement.addContent(andotherElement);


(Excuse mistakes, this is typed from memory..)

Now, somebody _PLEASE_ correct me if I'm wrong, (her unshakeable insistance that she's right has me wondering about my own understanding of the code) but those statement blocks are not exactly the same. They'll have the same result in the document tree (won't they?), but programmatically the result will be quite different.

Right?

And on another note, regardless of who's correct about that;

How on earth should I deal with this woman who is supposed to be an educator, but totally fails to answer any question I have?