Melissa Heeren

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since Feb 26, 2013
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Recent posts by Melissa Heeren

I've turned off Java on one of my machines. The company I work for requires that all its machines have the latest patches on all their installed software, to avoid security issues. I've spent too much time on that lately, and (hopefully) temporarily turned off Java until things settle down.
11 years ago
I teach a course that is intended to lead to Java Certification for our top high school students. They've been coding in Java for a while (these students have all taken and passed the Advanced Placement Exam for Computer Science). Would this book be appropriate as a classroom text?

My biggest problem is finding a text that is good for certification prep, but also has suggested projects or activities to learn the feature being studied. How would this fit in with that strategy?

And, of course, I need a high-quality reference for myself. I'm not a full-time Java professional (except sometimes in the summer) so I need sources that help answer questions from students quickly. When I started teaching C++ I used the C++ Primer Plus. What a great book! (at least for my purposes). The index was superb, and led to clear explanations and examples of features. Would this book fill that need?

Thanks!!

Melissa Heeren
11 years ago
Thanks - that's a lot better.
:-)
Actually that seems fair. I'm talking about NO indentations, at all. Here are the samples I'm referring to:

public class Sequence {
Sequence() { System.out.print("c "); }
{ System.out.print("y "); }
public static void main(String[] args) {
new Sequence().go();
}
void go() { System.out.print("g "); }
static { System.out.print("x "); }
}

and

public class MyLoop {
public static void main(String[] args) {
String[] sa = {"tom ", "jerry "};
for(int x = 0; x < 3; x++) {
for(String s: sa) {
System.out.print(x + " " + s);
if( x == 1) break;
}
}
}
}

and


interface Rideable {
String getGait();
}
public class Camel implements Rideable {
int weight = 2;
public static void main(String[] args) {
new Camel().go(8);
}
void go(int speed) {
++speed;
weight++;
int walkrate = speed * weight;
System.out.print(walkrate + getGait());
}
String getGait() {
return " mph, lope";
}
}



etc. Basically, ALL of the sample questions on the Oracle site have NO indentation at all. That's not what I've seen on the practice tests so far - some trick nesting notwithstanding. Is this what we should expect on the exam?

Thanks,
MJH
In addition to preparing myself for the exam, I teach advanced high school students in a magnet program, and my top kids are going to sit for the exam. We're using a variety of resources to prepare, including LearnKey OnlineExpert and Enthuware. The sample questions on the Oracle site have "ugly" code - no indentation, etc. Is this what we'll see on the exam? When I'm trying to figure out ugly code, the first thing I do is format it to make it readable. If that's the game here we'll learn the rules and play to win. But I don't want to spend precious test prep time on something we won't face on the test. (FWIW, I've seen REALLY ugly real-world code - in various assembly languages :-) )

Thanks in advance.