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In my first year we used DrJava (http://drjava.org/), what i really liked about it (the only thing i liked) is the Interactions Pane (http://drjava.org/images/drjava-screen-osx.png). The interactions pane works just like a python shell, where you can quickly write code and get feedback right away. DrJava currently has an Eclipse Plug-in (http://drjava.org/eclipse.shtml) that I believe is published under the BSD license. What do you guys think about integrating the interactions pane into IDE4EDU?
I took some time to test it and, honestly, I would never use that. Maybe I'm missing something? Someone can tell me a good exemple where using the interaction pane would be great? The problem with the interaction pane is that you need more then one line in Java to do something cool. It's much better in functionnal language where you can actually do something in one line of code. That's why there's a shell in the functionnal language I have tested.
When I was starting out I would use it when i wasn't sure of the correct syntax or when i didn't know what a method did. Another great use is testing, after having written a class you can use the interactions pane to instantiate your class and play around with your program. No I don't think it's a great tool for more experienced programmers but it sure helped me 4 years ago.
Honestly, I learn by making mistakes. So if I would have had that, I never would have learned the syntax because I would always have been checking if it was right. It would take far longer if you knew you could just type in the wrong syntax and it would tell you right away, rather than typing the wrong syntax and having to look in the errors on what line you messed up, then go and fix it. That makes you learn faster. Plus, Eclipse already highlights your mistakes with red Xs so you know when you've messed up. That's my personal opinion, because I remember better if it was a pain to fix.
I like the idea. Eclipse has something called a Scrapbook page. Just select any project, select New->Java Run/Debug-> Scrapbook page and start typing Java code. The difficulty with the scrapbook is getting the imports correct. That said, if you could develop a simple variation on the scrapbook page that is super easy to use, I think it would be a good addition.
Is it enough to create a Java Project with a single scrapbook page and hide it? It should be an easy matter to tool the explorer to just not show the project named "_InteractiveJava" or something. We can add a button to hide/show an editor for the scrapbook page.
