I'd have to learn Java to even debate this point..(and I'm sure I'm talking to someone with much greater coding experience than I have)..And then I wonder if it would scare even more kids off. These really are newbies.

I'd put myself in the "more feedback early" school or thought. I got my class to write working code the first day without explaning about libraries, classes and all the other fun stuff you'd have to before you could do anything useful. It would depend on what you want to teach. I'd be happy if my students come out of this able to use Perl or some language to solve simple problems. One or 2 might go on an take on C or Java in college. For the rest, they will have gotten part of the way which is a lot more than the rest of their peers.

---

---

Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!

Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.

Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.

Please read these before you post! —

• How do I compose an effective node title?
• How do I post a question effectively?
• Markup in the Monastery

Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:

a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr

You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)

	For:		Use:
	&		&
	<		&lt;
	>		&gt;
	[		&#91;
	]		&#93;

Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?

See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.