- From: Elliotte Harold <elharo@metalab.unc.edu>
- Date: Sun, 04 Feb 2007 17:27:54 -0500
For a few years I spent a lot of time teaching DOM to mixed audiences: i.e. Java. JavaScript, C++ and other language programmers in the same room. Initially I described a lot of examples in IDL to try not to offend anybody. Instead, as it happened, I annoyed everyone equally. I rapidly learned that almost nobody was actually comfortable reading IDL. Showing the Java bindings with some hand waving and an example or two of how this mapped to C++ and JavaScript satisfied everyone a lot more than IDL. I soon dropped all the IDL material from my notes. No one missed it. I understand why DOM and now Web Apps 1.0 needed to be *defined* in terms of IDL, but I suspect it would be very helpful if there were normative (or perhaps non-normative) appendices that showed the bindings to at least Java, and possibly other languages as well. This would be much easier for most programmers to read and understand. I don't yet see any placeholder in the spec for this. My apologies if I missed it; but I do think this would be a very useful addition for pedagogical reasons if nothing else. For myself, I am working on some Web Apps 1.0 notes at the moment, and am translating the IDL into Java by hand just to make it a little clearer to my audience. -- ?Elliotte Rusty Harold elharo at metalab.unc.edu Java I/O 2nd Edition Just Published! http://www.cafeaulait.org/books/javaio2/ http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0596527500/ref=nosim/cafeaulaitA/
Received on Sunday, 4 February 2007 14:27:54 UTC