Re: Mounting filesystems and such

Sean Kirkpatrick wrote:
> Thanks for your reply Tim.
> 
> I'm leaning toward one of two IDEs; NetBeans and BlueJ. I just stumbled 
> across BlueJ last night while browsing java.sun.com while looking for 
> something else. I'm very impressed with both of the IDEs; I'm growing 
> more and more disenchanted with the whole commercial software thing, 
> especially for educational use.
> 
> One of the features of BlueJ that attracted me immediately is it's use 
> of a simple UML front end as the primary component of the user 
> interface. In my experience, students coming into object oriented 
> programming have a very difficult time making the shift to thinking 
> about objects. The fact that BlueJ makes this an integral part of the 
> user experience is, I think, a major improvement in pedagogical approach 
> to the problem.

Thanks, Sean - that's good feedback!  One of the purposes of this
mailing list and the whole edu.netbeans.org initiative is to find
out areas where NetBeans could better support educators.  Since NetBeans
is modular, there is lots of room for integration of tools that are
specific to education.

If you do end up going with NetBeans, I would love it if you would post
your experiences and feedback here, so that we can make sure that things 
move in the right directions for better and better support for NetBeans
as an educational tool.

> OTOH, it's a relatively simple environment without the wealth of 
> professional quality features that NetBeans has. I may start the class 
> using BlueJ and switch to NetBeans as the complexity of the s/w grows. 
> In any case, I will be recommending both environments to my students.

That's cool to hear!

We've also talked a bit about the idea of "education builds" - basically
a NetBeans build with all of the bells and whistles stripped out - just
basic compile, edit, debug, no form editor, nothing but the most basic
and critical functionality.

While that's not a part of the build process yet, it is relatively easy
to do a shared install of NetBeans and configure it as such.  Will your
students be working off a shared instance of NetBeans, or installing it
on their own?

> One thing that I've found about CS teachers, especially in my school - 
> they tend to be very quite. I've set up numerous lists to facilitate 
> communication amongst my fellow faculty, but it seems like I'm the only 
> one who's participating. Sigh.
 >
> So this list is for those teaching Java and not just NetBeans? Cool. 
> I'll be here a lot, I image.

Well, I confess, yours is the first post in a while - but I am committed
to seeing this project be a success, and perhaps we can get some more
happening here.  And if your colleagues are quiet, maybe a few of them
would sign up for this list and could be drawn out a bit?

Best regards,

Tim