Teaching Object-Oriented Concepts Through GUI Programming

It is difficult to teach Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) from a language perspective, even to experienced programmers. Complex syntaxes obscure concepts and make it difficult for learners to get a real "Feel" for OO architecture. This is a classic example of "Not seeing the forest for the trees." OOP is best taught within a context of an application or software framework. Graphical User Interface (GUI) programming provides a particularly effective vehicle for this purpose because it is relevant to virtually all applications and provides immediate feedback on the correctness of OO structures through tangible, visual results. They have built a GUI Programming course that focuses on the OO aspects of building user and Application Programmer Interfaces (APIs).