Programming Concepts

Misconception: Students get confused by the multiple equals signs comparison operators in Javascript making it difficult to motivate the difference to beginning students.

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Tell students they have to believe that some things just work before they will understand why it works because they need exposure to a lot of material before some concepts make sense individually.

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Misconception: If you consistently use the same variable names during class in lectures and examples, students may incorrectly assume objects in Java can only have those names.

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Relate how cool it would be to have the entire dictionary for another language put into your head to importing libraries in Java to help students make sense of this abstract concept.

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Misconception: students struggle with the onMousePress method (and other mouse interaction methods) in the Java objectdraw Library from Williams College; they need help understanding it’s called even when don’t explicitly call it.

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Teach "if" statements before "switch" statements, then explain how "switch" is a specialized case of "if" by translating an "if" statement into a "switch" statement.

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Misconception: students develop the habit of putting the type in front of variables; they don’t realize that this creates a new variable resulting in lots of variables with the same name.

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Misconception: students struggle with scopes of variables and may not understand when a variable can be accessed and when it cannot be accessed.

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Remind students to match types on both sides of the equations because they often try to combine types when creating variables.

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In Javascript, put off object-oriented design until last to avoid complexity students don’t need.

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