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Java Java Data Structures Getting There Type Casting

kevin hudson
PLUS
kevin hudson
Courses Plus Student 11,987 Points

This is not the right time to teach us this in the java track. Or at least slow down and teach this differently.

I've been following the java track almost daily and I feel like the way this was taught just confused me. Especially with the REPL. I was using jshell and now switching to REPL? Doing the code examples in the console does not help to grasp the concept. Show us some examples within the workspace, please. Also, I feel like there is a big jump from arrays and data type to Type casting with Objects. It's like in Anchorman movie "That escalated pretty quickly"

David Pollard
David Pollard
4,324 Points

Yes, I agree with this. It went from "I'm really grasping this" to " Woaaaaaaaaahhhhhh"

Had to rewatch a few times to grasp it and I'm not 100% sure I've got it yet !

2 Answers

I agree. Pictures and a much better effort to ensure that the student understands each part and problem properly before proceeding would be helpful.

Of course pausing and rewinding works, but that becomes really irritating when it happens multiple times in a video, making one lose both flow and temper.

If the trade-off is longer courses for proper explanations, personally I'd select longer courses. Running on 1.5 X speed for those who want it works better than constantly rewinding for those who need that.

kevin hudson
PLUS
kevin hudson
Courses Plus Student 11,987 Points

Yes, I did pause, rewind, and slowdown. Everyone has their own learning style as well as capacity. I think this should have been broken down further before jumping into a project. It's the constantly having to pause and then look up in the Treehouse forums as well as elsewhere like StackOverflow and geekforgeeks.com to getting a better understanding along with solid plain examples and exercises.

If any of the staff at treehouse reads this, somewhere after Java objects subject and into Data structures there needs to be a path breakdown on examples of how to call an object and create ArrayList, lists and hash from objects before jumping into a project. I'm already trying to follow the project syntax so fast I'm just not grasping how it all works. When I hear the instructor say "Do you understand" I'm always saying to myself " nope, but ok let's keep going". I should here questions like, "what do you suppose should go here?" or "How do you create a new list and assign it to another list?". When I go to the coding exercise I have to eventually take a peek at the forums to get me started or just copy the whole code to move on because it's just taking to long.