Rev v. Java

[Gernot Lorenz]

Dear Jim, Jan, and Dar,
I`m reading Your postings with great interest.
As an teacher for computer science at a German high school, this weeks I 
have a likely problem like You, Jim: which programming language should I 
choose for my pupils ?
A short information: At German high schools pupils at the age of about 
16 can have lessons in programming computers the first and - usually - 
the only time, except they move to an university. At German univerities 
nowadays there is the question: C++ or Java, or sometimes Oberon and 
Scheme (seldom). At the high schools it is very simple: Because 95% of 
German schools have Windows-PCs, they do Pascal with Delphi or Java (it 
is increasing).

Over the years I have teached Pascal, Basic, Hypercard and Java to my 
high-school pupils.
In my long-time experience I can say, that
- Java as the first programming language is too hard for these 16 year 
old pupils. Too complicated, too much semicolons, brackets, too much 
paradigms (OO), too much working on GUI and so on.
- Hypercard was the best: no wasting time for doing GUIs, immediate 
success, and so on. But: The pupils could not work at  home, because 
they had Windows-PCs but Hypercard is an Apple product which runs only 
under Mac OS.

But now, with metacard and Revolution, the OS-Platform doesnt matter, 
and so my decision will be metacard or Revolution, and my pupils can do 
at home the same with their Windows-PCs what they do at school with the 
Macs.
So far, so good.
But there will be new problems:
There is no printed matter for metacard or Revolution, which fits to the 
situation of my pupils.
So I have a question:
- Do You know high-school teachers or university-teachers using metacard 
or Revolution for exchanging experience ? Can You give e-mail-adresses 
of them ?
- Do You know any printed matter or school books for that subject ? (the 
English language is no problem, I can translate it in German)

Thank You for any kind of help.
Yours
Gernot A. Lorenz

glorenz at rz-online.de