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What speaks against a Java tutorial for elementary school students?

Java's rubbish

That sums it up nicely.

plus it's pretty useless to learn all kids to program while in effect only a fraction would actually end up in IT and the vast majority seeks other professions such as nursing (you should know), B.A., gynaecology and what not... they better learn better math and logic skills.

next to that, coding java is for Indians, not Europeans!

OTOH it'd be nice to see programming content in maths or further maths A-levels (don't know what you call them outside the UK but they're the things you do after secondary school and before university) where you're learning about algorithms already. I'd love to see Java completely abolished from... well... everything, though.

For my A-levels I had some programming tasks. Implement quicksort, insertsort, bubblesort,... And do Boolean algebra.

My idea was that some elementary school pupils get bored at school because they've learned everything themselves already. Programming is like problem solving. My hypothesis is that this way the intelligence of the elementary school pupils can be boosted.

Adok: ..and then developed into a new breed of super-humans? ;)

gloom: Yes, why not? What speaks against it?

Hook, line aaand sink 'em.

gloom: you meant to say super-adoks?
(in either case the world is doomed!)

Adok, I had to do those but purely theoretically, no implementation.

Exactly what is a-levels thingies? Our "math" classes before uni is a joke.

How about boosting teachers's intelligence first... :) Now THAT would be a challenge.

forget Java, everybody knows that the purest and then most educational object-oriented language is... Eiffel :p

adok: that would be an important step. technology is ruling the human culture and the vast majority of all users does know almost nothing about how their devices work. so they can't judge the value of them accordingly thus all decisions are based on secondary values (marketing, e.g. apple design). it's normal to work and spend time/money into the big ever evolving industry for better products. TECHNO ANALPHABETISM i say! like back in the middle ages when the bible was used in a similar way!
the more people know how to use the machines actively, the more there's a way out of the misery our planet is in at the moment.

Precisely. By creating more nerds we'd be fighting overpopulation.

I'm for it.

Are you sure ? A future full of battle-ready nerds fighting each other using advanced mathematics, smart auto-propelled armors with jetpacks, and particle beams of Death, well that sounds okay by me... (hell yeah)
But I'm just not sure it's the kind of future most people want. :)

Adok : trying to boost bored pupils'intelligence using java is like trying to write a good diskmag with EP for an already bored audience.

Oh, but wait...

does not compute.

no, not sure at all...

hm, there's JUDO actually
http://judo.sourceforge.net/

I'd vote for processing rather than java. Though I did like logo in my childhood.

programming in elementary school? I liked legos but I digress. Anyway, it might not be a bad idea anyway to get some sort of curriculum to where they are at least exposed to the concept (never hurts to be cultured ;) ). A high level language like java might be good for demonstration purposes or VB, but we have to remember not to be nerds and suggest they learn ASM or some rubbish just because thats what we use. They are elementary school kids, not CS majors or engineers. :)

How about setting up a simple javascript environment with a text input box, an output frame and a "EXECUTE" button? That sounds simple enough for elementary school children.

Processing might be a good idea too, since it's simple and focuses on graphical output (which is the most rewarding kind of output IMO).