Guidelines for Teaching Object Orientation with Java

How to best teach object orientation to first year students is currently a topic of much debate. One of the tools suggested to aid in this task is BlueJ, an integrated development environment specifically designed for teaching. BlueJ supports a unique style of introduction of OO concepts. In this paper we discuss a set of problems with OO teaching, present some guidelines for better course design and show how BlueJ can be used to make significant improvements to introductory OO courses. We end by esenting a description of a possible project sequence using this teaching approach

Blue - A Language for Teaching Object-Oriented Programming

Teaching object-oriented programming has clearly become an important part of computer science education. We agree with many others that the best place to teach it is in the CS1 introductory course. Many problems with this have been reported in the literature. These mainly result from inadequate languages and environments. Blue is a new language and integrated programming environment, currently under development explicitly for object-oriented teaching. We expect clear advantages from the use of Blue for first year teaching compared to using other available languages. This paper describes the design principles on which the language was based and the most important aspects of the language itself

Testing Object-Oriented Programs: Making it Simple

One of the major difficulties facing anyone trying to teach the first programming course is how to encourage students to thoroughly test their programs. We would argue that the main reasons for this are the lack of suitable tools for testing and the need to write extra "debug" code in order to verify correct operation. We further argue that the problem is even worse with object-oriented languages because of multiple classes and encapsulation. In this paper we describe the testing tools within the Blue programming environment which allow object-oriented programs to be thoroughly tested without writing a single line of new code

I/O Considered Harmful (At least for the first few weeks)

One of the major difficulties with teaching the first programming course is input/output. It is desirable to show students how to input data and output results early in the course in order to motivate the students and so that they can see the results of their programs. Output is also a useful tool for testing programs. However, in most programming languages input and output are esoteric and the techniques for performing input and output must be learnt by the students at an early stage, precisely when they are trying to understand the basics of programming. We argue that input/output operations need not be taught in the early stages of a course if the language environment provides appropriate tools for testing programs. This assertion is demonstrated by reference to the Blue objectoriented language and environment

Enabling Adiabatic Passages Between Disjoint Regions in Parameter Space through Topological Transitions

We explore topological transitions in parameter space in order to enable adiabatic passages between regions adiabatically disconnected within a given parameter manifold. To this end, we study the Hamiltonian of two coupled qubits interacting with external magnetic fields, and make use of the analogy between the Berry curvature and magnetic fields in parameter space, with spectrum degeneracies associated to magnetic charges. Symmetry-breaking terms induce sharp topological transitions on these charge distributions, and we show how one can exploit this effect to bypass crossing degeneracies. We also investigate the curl of the Berry curvature, an interesting but as of yet not fully explored object, which together with its divergence uniquely defines this field. Finally, we suggest a simple method for measuring the Berry curvature, thereby showing how one can experimentally verify our results.Comment: 17 pages, 11 figure

Content and action: The guidance theory of representation

The current essay introduces the guidance theory of representation, according to which the content and intentionality of representations can be accounted for in terms of the way they provide guidance for action. We offer a brief account of the biological origins of representation, a formal characterization of the guidance theory, some examples of its use, and show how the guidance theory handles some traditional problem cases for representation: the problems of error and of representation of fictional and abstract entities

A brief introduction to the guidance theory of representation

Recent trends in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science can be fruitfully characterized as part of the ongoing attempt to come to grips with the very idea of homo sapiens--an intelligent, evolved, biological agent--and its signature contribution is the emergence of a philosophical anthropology which, contra Descartes and his thinking thing, instead puts doing at the center of human being. Applying this agency-oriented line of thinking to the problem of representation, this paper introduces the Guidance Theory, according to which the content and intentionality of representations can be accounted for in terms of the way they provide guidance for action. We offer a brief account of the motivation for the theory, and a formal characterization

Geodesic Paths for Quantum Many-Body Systems

We propose a method to obtain optimal protocols for adiabatic ground-state preparation near the adiabatic limit, extending earlier ideas from [D. A. Sivak and G. E. Crooks, Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 190602 (2012)] to quantum non-dissipative systems. The space of controllable parameters of isolated quantum many-body systems is endowed with a Riemannian quantum metric structure, which can be exploited when such systems are driven adiabatically. Here, we use this metric structure to construct optimal protocols in order to accomplish the task of adiabatic ground-state preparation in a fixed amount of time. Such optimal protocols are shown to be geodesics on the parameter manifold, maximizing the local fidelity. Physically, such protocols minimize the average energy fluctuations along the path. Our findings are illustrated on the Landau-Zener model and the anisotropic XY spin chain. In both cases we show that geodesic protocols drastically improve the final fidelity. Moreover, this happens even if one crosses a critical point, where the adiabatic perturbation theory fails.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures + 4 pages supplemen