Re: Netbeans in education

I'm a student in my fifth year (I hope to start my masters thesis soon). 
As a parttime job, I help at some first and second year lab assignments 
for computer science. I'm an assistent for the first three programming 
(in Java) courses for Computer Science.

I want to stress that I'm talking about those students who are just 
entering university and taking their first programming courses. As they 
have to get familiar with a lot of new concepts already, the usual IDE 
is an overkill with a lot of functionality they don't need. I'm not 
questioning the use of IDEs, I'm questioning the usability of the 
current standard IDEs.

Another reason for a 'NetBeans lite' is a practical one: University 
computers usually aren't the latest state-of-the-art ones. Netbeans in 
its current full version doesn't run very smoothly on it. A suggestion: 
make a paper available which explains step-by-step which modules usually 
can be switched off in a first-year educational environment. I'll be 
happy to cooperate!

regards,

Remco

George Dvorak wrote:
> Hi,
> I agree with Blasius, also would like to add, that also the advantage
> with NetBeans, since it's like a little lego set, it's also cool for 
> the students to write modules to plug in to NetBeans, and also to hack
> the NetBeans Platform and play with it and understand a more
> complicating code.
> 
> Also, I would like to ask Remco, are you a student or a professor?
> 
> George
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Blasius Lofi Dewanto wrote:
> 
>>I think this is the real power of NetBeans.
>>NetBeans is implemented as a real
>>component-oriented IDE. So you can just
>>de-install the components you don't want
>>your students to use and re-package it.
>>After all this is the advantage of using
>>an open source Java-IDE.
>>
>>It's important to let freshmen students using
>>javac on the command prompt (not only by clicking
>>the compile icon) to understand the process
>>itself. This is for sure. But after a while they also
>>should enjoy the fun of assembling a Java GUI with
>>drag&drop capability of NetBeans. The only
>>disadvantage of NetBeans is that you don't
>>have a true "two-ways-views" between the GUI code
>>and the GUI designer. This two-ways-views could help
>>them to understand the coding of GUI in Java a lot.
>>
>>Depending on the subject you are teaching, going back
>>to the notepad is not a solution. I think, the students
>>nowadays don't have to experience the "old" time as
>>I had to work with notepad and command prompt at
>>my first year. They have to continue searching
>>for some new ideas and expand their knowledge.
>>They should not look back at the ancient time of
>>programming...
>>
>>Best regards,
>>--
>>---------------------------------------------------
>>Blasius Lofi Dewanto
>>---------------------------------------------------
>>OpenUSS (Open University Support System)
>>http://openuss.sourceforge.net
>>---------------------------------------------------
>>
>>
>>>If Netbeans wants to become more widely used in education, it's not a
>>>matter of what it needs, it's more a matter of what it doesn't need. The
>>>  standard release right now is very much feature driven, with students
>>>new to Java 'drowning' in IDE functionality.
>>>At my university, the tendency now is to get rid of the IDEs again
>>>(after having used VisualCafe for 4 years in first year computer science
>>>education), returning back to Notepad.
>>>A freshman student who has to become familiar with the basics of
>>>programming really doesn't need JSP support, CVS support, etc.  I think
>>>the release of a lite version of NetBeans with only the basic modules
>>>included will be a good step in the right direction.
>>>
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