Thursday, June 12, 2008

java.no as a student resource

java.no, maintained by javaBin, is a resource for a mature crowd of Java developers.

The majority of newbie Java developers, are students looking for tutorials, demoes and code samples to complete their 101 programming homework. Alas, like The Serverside and InfoQ, java.no alienates new Java developers. Todays agenda is architecting billion dollar enterprise systems, improving project agility or Business Intelligence. It is way past telling how to write hello world or make a robot play soccer, and I don't think the Java news resources ever have written how to.

But we want those students. Either because they're the enterprise architects of tomorrow, or because they have lots of valuable spare time on their hands. We also want them to visit and contribute to java.no because of the their different perspective.

And how do you get students to contribute? The students are propably visiting the site because of their homework assignment. Why not contact the staff responsible for the assignment, and offer them a forum where the students can discuss their problems and exchange ideas and resources, while the staff and the community can offer help and alternatives to cheating.

The material discussed in such fora are most likely relevant across courses and universities.  Et Voila, the students build up a material base, relevant for Java newbies.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Spam will be pruned