I will share the results on a future post. I understand your point, but I think the assignment will enhance their skills related to objects, classes, methods and instantiation.
That's my goal, not teaching about compilers or language structure. About that they will learn empirically.
Yup! And I didn't mean to sound so negative (sorry). I do hope it works (and want to hear about it when it does!). I've definitely gotten really excited about assignments before when I thought they were neat and that the students ought to be able to figure everything out---but which turned out to be just a bit too hard and thus demoralising rather than empowering. (If that happens, it's still not worth dropping---tweak it until it works. Once you get it working, there's probably a SIGCSE or ITiCSE paper in it for you!)
I really got your point now. I thought about the "demoralising X empowering" and my solution for that was to work with pairs of students. Working as a team, they can discuss and motivate each other.
When I blog about the results, I will highlight the number of pairs that completed, partially completed and did not complete the assignment.
That's my goal, not teaching about compilers or language structure. About that they will learn empirically.