It's out! Objects First With Java, 7th edition.

Now out in print and as e-text.

It has been 22 years since the first edition, and we're still going.

www.bluej.org/objects-first/

Why is a bug called a bug?

The origin of the term is interesting, and often mis-attributed. The famous case is that of a moth found by Grace Murray Hopper inside a Mark II.

­Long before this, however, Thomas Edison was onto his “bugs”...

Continue here: blogs.kcl.ac.uk/proged/2025/...

A Brief History of Java

This is a new chapter in our book "Objects First with Java".

In the book, it motivates why you should (or shouldn't) use specific language features.

It may be interesting to anyone interested in Java or the development of programming languages.

tinyurl.com/brief-java

ATTENTION: Free Computing Teachers Conference

Our speakers are now confirmed for CKC 2025:

@dsyme.bsky.social @megjlow.bsky.social @beckyfranks.bsky.social @tracygardner.bsky.social @lollypopstar.bsky.social @neilccbrown.bsky.social @suesentance.bsky.social

Sign up here: tinyurl.com/CKC-Kings

Attention: Computing teachers!

CKC 2025 will have a fantastic keynote: Don Syme @dsyme.bsky.social will talk about

Trends in AI-Assisted Software Development

Plus: a full day of presentations and workshops.

More information and sign up here: www.computingatschool.org.uk/events/2025/...

Save the date!

On 5th July, we are hosting the CAS & King's Computing Conference for teachers. If you are a computing teacher and can come to London, have a look at this: a fantastic free event with great talks and workshops.

Open for registration now.

www.computingatschool.org.uk/events/2025/...

A new paper (a contribution in honour of Niklaus Wirth):

It's an easy read and should be of interest to anyone who cares about programming languages in education.

Relevant for the discussion of Java's status as a teaching language.

Here: infedu.vu.lt/journal/INFE...

@java-champions.bsky.social

We have a cover design for the 7th Edition of our Objects First book!
Very exciting.

Lesson of language design? Don't try to be clever!

JavaScript​:

0 == '0' -> true
0 == '' -> true
'0' == '' -> false

result: Transitivity of equality is broken!

a == b and b == c, so a == c ?

Not in JavaScript, it isn't!

Read: blogs.kcl.ac.uk/proged/2024/...

Why is this one a good multiple choice question, but many others are not?

blogs.kcl.ac.uk/proged/2024/...

On my blog, I have written about my ongoing frustration with badly written MCQs, and what makes many of them so bad (and also an example of a better one).

Here is a question I give my students in week 6 or so:

Can you write a declaration of variables a and b so that this code prints "false"?

Last time walking over Waterloo Bridge to my programming lecture this term.

Always beautiful.

We have a new paper in pre-print: What makes a good hint for a stuck student programmer? How can you investigate this? And are Humans or LLMs better at delivering them?

Joint work with Neil (@neilccbrown.bsky.social), Pierre, Juho and Paul.

Read it here: arxiv.org/pdf/2411.18151

Our original article about Frame-Based Editing has now got more than 40k downloads from our KCL research repository! That's a record in the department by orders of magnitude.

If you haven't seen it yet, it's here:
kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/en/pu...

With the latest releases, both BlueJ (@bluej.org) and Greenfoot (@greenfoot.org) are optimised for Raspberry Pi (@raspberrypi.bsky.social) again, and now have dedicated installers for this platform.

Get them here:

BlueJ v5.4.1: bluej.org
Greenfoot v3.9.0: greenfoot.org