The Design of an Object-Oriented Environment and Language for Teaching
Michael Kölling · Kent Academic Repository (University of Kent) · 1999
While object-orientation has been widely accepted as an important programming paradigm, teaching object-orientation remains difficult.Experience reports suggest that some problems can be avoided by teaching object-orientation as the first language in an introductory course.However, other problems remain, in particular languages and environments are regularly criticised as unsuitable and overly complex.This thesis discusses aspects of object-oriented languages and environments that affect their suitability for first year teaching.General requirements for languages and environments are identified and used as a means to judge the suitability of the most popular systems in use today.The discussion shows that none of the currently available systems is suitable for object-oriented first year teaching.I have to thank my good friends Detlef Rudolph, who first introduced me to computers and awoke my interest in these machines, and Axel Schmolitzky, who helped a great deal in maintaining the fun of it while we were studying.Axel also gave valuable comments on a first draft of this thesis.Damien Watkins read large parts of this work, and gave helpful feedback.I am grateful to Professor J. L. Keedy who has opened many doors for me that have turned out to be important in my life, one of which was the one to Australia.Very special thanks go to Professor John Rosenberg who, as my supervisor, not only provided the most excellent help and supervision I could wish for, but also was of great importance to me privately when I arrived in this then foreign country.His support enabled me to find my way and build a new life