RE: Java recommendations for young students?

["Tony McCune" <tmccune@crosslogic.com>]

You might get her using Eclipse, the new IDE that is free from www.eclipse.org.  The IBM WebSphere Application Developer tool is built on eclipse.  With that and Tomcat she could begin creating some of her own server side projects.  There are plenty of good books for Java beginners right now.  I was one at B&N the other day that was about creating a Pizza in Java.  

Tony McCune
CrossLogic Inc
770-962-1915
Interested in an enterprise portal that will run on any server?  try http://xportaldemo.eitasoft.net/

-----Original Message-----
From: aaron [mailto:aaron@pd.org]
Sent: Wednesday, February 06, 2002 4:04 AM
To: 'atl java UG'
Subject: Java recommendations for young students? 


My 15 year old daughter just completed her first formal programming
class, a 4 week, 30 hour Java course that was offered for winter short
term. (Her high school breaks the year up into two long terms focused on
traditional subjects alternating with two ~4 week short terms packed with
a lot of special interest electives).

Given my support and cultivation of her more "geeky" interests (she
prefers to write, compute, create and surf with her Linux and Amiga
systems), she went into the class with some experience in HTML, basic
unix shell commands, a little elementary CGI scripting and a lot of
general computer and electronic media knowledge.

She enjoyed what she learned of Java and earned an 'A' for her efforts,
but the class went by quickly and she was left wanting to take it
further. Given the short time frame, I don't think they got much past
learning the Code Warrior IDE, creating a handful of fairly basic classes
and plugging in a few javascripts.

I'm afraid my own Java experience is (currently) too limited to be very
useful in tutoring her, so I'm hunting for Java and general programming
education ideas that would be appropriate for a very bright, curious and
hard working High School student with a lot of functional knowledge in
computer science.

Any suggestions are welcome and appreciated, though good training books
and other self paced tutorial options would seem best suited to the
hectic schedule of a modern teenager.

With gratitude,
aaron