Classifying the Difficulties in Teaching Students in the Subject Java Programming

Students experience multiple difficulties in learning the Java programming language. This report attempts to classify these difficulties based on the author's experience from the laboratory classes in the Java Programming course with the Computer Science and Software Engineering majors. The classification will help to suggest workable methods and means to overcome or at least minimize these difficulties. Observations show that the main difficulties are related to the transition from the already studied language (C++ or C#) to the new syntactic constructions and abstractions of Java, the different implementation of the key concepts and mechanisms, and the application of the object-oriented approach when solving specific tasks