Last year, all of my students earned four's and five's on the AP Computer Science exams. Using HTDCH made it easy to teach abstraction and interfaces, topics that typically give students difficulties. Students from other schools have asked me to tutor them and have expressed that when I explain Java to them they "get it" but have difficulties understanding their teachers.
Your material gives my students a competitive advantage over other students in college. Their programs are better structured and clearer to read. Today one of my students, interested in learning C asked me why all of the C books on my shelf are so advanced (they are just a collection of a lot of normal C programming books from about ten years ago). This student was cultivated on HTDP and had not had to learn from any of the industry standard C text books. He was very surprised when I told him that these text books were standard learning text books ten years ago.
Thank you for such wonderful teaching materials.
March 8, 2006
I took the course HtDCH course this summer 2003. This was the third Java class that I took. The first Java class was through a university extension and was helpful though at the end of the class, I was quite confused and disoriented. In the second course at another university I was completely lost after about the third day. The HtDCH material was exactly what I needed to bring all of the disparate concepts together from the other course. In addition, I learned advanced concepts (anonymous inner classes) by the fifth day and actually understood them. I used the HtDCH curriculum in my AP Computer Science Class this year with great success. I expect most of my students to earn a 4 or 5 on the exam even though I covered the Big-O notation rather inadequately. I heartily endorse the curriculum for AP Computer Science teachers.
May 5, 2004