Special section
Fintan Culwin · ACM SIGPLAN Notices · 1998
In a previous paper in SIGPLAN notices tlJ I wrote a report on the first UK Java in the Computing Curriculum Conference (JICC 1) held at South Bank University in Febuary 1997.At that time only a small number of institutions had joined Java.At JICC2, held at South Bank University in January 1998, a larger number of institutions had had experience of using Java and perhaps it is now possible to start to justify the choice.The Object First -Object Last debate was again expounded with Jeremy Gibbons arguing for 'Structured Programming in Java '.Peter Martin's presentation 'Java, the good, the bad and the ugly' expounded the alternative, Object First, approach, in the light of experience.(Martin was one of the authors of the Wallis paper at the JICC 1 which argued for an Object Last approach.)This paper might also have started by stating that it came to praise Java and not to bury it!The good (safe references, strict object orientation, single inheritance) far outweighed the bad (down-casting, absence of generics, provision of null statements).However, the good was compromised by the ugly (C style syntax, absence of simple I/O and deficiencies in the AWT and Graphics class).