in reply to Perl High School Graduation

I'd like to leave them with a taste of things to come without losing them.

Perhaps you shouldn't use perl to explain it at all.

Ask them to create a Person. Ask for typical characteristics of a person. Let them have some fun with it. Write the answers on the board.

Ask for actions most people do. Write those on the board. Now turn to the class one more time and ask for two volunteers. We'll pick Mary and Bob. Tell Bob he is a person (even if you're not sure). Write "Bob is a Person" on the board. Do the same for Mary.

You could mention that Person is an object. Feel your audience out and introduce OO terminology accordingly. Leave them with the excitement of explaining the world as objects containing objects containing objects containing objects . . .


HTH,
Charles K. Clarkson
Clarkson Energy Homes, Inc.

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Re: Re: Perl High School Graduation
by gnubbs (Beadle) on May 20, 2002 at 14:05 UTC

    You have the right idea, but I might use an elevator instead of person. Otherwise you might end up with "Bob is a fat person" written on the board and poor Bob crying in the corner.

    I would argue that you don't need to teach OOP yet. Start with OOD and considering it is already May 20 and the students probably have some sort of last program to work on and study for thier final, don't push them too far. OOP can be hard to pick up on at first. The ideas behind it are very easy, but the programming may not be at this point.

[reply]
      I think you are right there. I don't want them to be able to write classes yet, just know what they are and be able to use existing modules. Doing that for real would be a good second semester.
[reply]

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