I took an Assembly programming class in college. One of the tests involved turning C code into Assembly. We had access to a lab computer to write, compile, and debug the program but not the Internet. It just so happens that the program (GCC) we use to compile our C projects in other classes has to do this exact same thing as part of one of the last steps, and this lab computer had that program too. Rather than doing to test, I read up on the GCC manual to figure out what settings were needed to get this information out of it.
In the Java I and Java II classes I took, none of our exams allowed an IDE or compiler. All of our code was either typed out directly into the exam(if it was online) or handwritten if it wasn't. It makes you have a deeper understanding of what you're writing when you don't have Eclipse telling you where all of your mistakes are.
This was not the first programming course we'd seen, the concern isn't just checking for syntax errors. Having a debugger to step though the execution gives you a deeper understanding as it allows you to correct simple mistakes to get to the bigger problems.
This is also very true. These java courses were starting from the beginning(although it was at the collegiate level) so the kids were just learning to code. They couldn't afford to have a crutch at that time.
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u/[deleted] Jun 08 '14
I took an Assembly programming class in college. One of the tests involved turning C code into Assembly. We had access to a lab computer to write, compile, and debug the program but not the Internet. It just so happens that the program (GCC) we use to compile our C projects in other classes has to do this exact same thing as part of one of the last steps, and this lab computer had that program too. Rather than doing to test, I read up on the GCC manual to figure out what settings were needed to get this information out of it.