Day 3 Some Exercises

I am appalled.

Today's lesson is just a review of the constructs in C (no difference what so ever). After teaching them Integer.parseInt, Double.parseDouble, the String .equals() method and how to print numbers i had assumed that with just a little coaxing, they'd get to be able to solve simple problems.

Problems such as these (sample dialogs):
ME1 -- Password dialog
Enter password: wrong
You got it wrong!
Enter password: right
You got it right in 2 tries! (counter gets +2 bonus)

ME2 -- Interest problem
Enter money: 100
Enter interest: .1
Enter years 3:
Year 1 -- 110
Year 2 -- 121
Year 3 -- 133.1
(+2 if single dialog box)
(+2 on use of special JOptionPane icons, required online research)

ME3 -- Right Pyramid
Enter n: 4
*
**
***
****

The morning class did pretty well, but the afternoon class was positively appalling. I mean, close to half the class took 2 hours just to do number one.

And I didnt tell them exactly how to input numbers... I told them that JOptionPane.showInputDialog outputs strings, and then Integer.parseInt converts Strings to integers, etc... And a lot of them didn't get it!

I mean, they're supposed to have gone through the Introduction to Programming I course at least. These exercises were simple problems only designed to test them if they could use the java constructs and the new i/o scheme coming from their c background...

*sigh*

at least they know their constructs... im just a bit worried as the rest of the semester is going to get harder than this. im considering having review sessions for them...

I'll find out in the next meeting... After another round of machine exercises i guess...