Pranav Peshwe wrote:
Digressing a bit - how about _not_ allowing an IDE at all ? IMHO, using a console based editor is an important and essential skill when operating *nix kind of OSes. Also, using IDEs right from the beginning will keep the student in dark about what goes into compiling and debugging a program. And even more important - the student might develop a feeling that, compiling/debugging without the IDE is something very difficult and involved (which is not at all the case). I realized this after talking to some engg. students who had never used the command line to compile their programs. The downside of not using an IDE will be - the instructor/supervisor might have to answer more queries about the development process rather than the code written :-s My 2 cents... Comments welcome.
IDE's are good for saving time. If you teaching just the language as opposed to all of the development process, starting out a IDE can help students focus on what they need to learn. If the language has a sharp leaving curve, a IDE acts as a buffer. You can also teach the alternative methods including how to do it on the command line in the process later on. A number of languages have a lot of boiler plate code and long strings where it is completely inefficient to work on them without a IDE atleast during real development. On example would be Java and Eclipse.
Rahul -- ______________________________________________________________________ Pune GNU/Linux Users Group Mailing List: (plug-mail@plug.org.in) List Information: http://plug.org.in/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/plug-mail Send 'help' to [EMAIL PROTECTED] for mailing instructions.
