Anyone self taught?

[shagymoe]

I'm looking for somene who is completely self taught.....with only help from the internet.....no mentors.
I would like to know your strategy for this and any resources you might have come up with to help you learn.
I really need a few good tutorials, and I've found some, but most don't describe enough.
I would like to find a guide that explains EVERY LINE of the code.
Thanks for the help

 

[Vepo]

Hi shagymoe,

Well, I'm not really completely self taught, but the first java book I read was David Flanagan's book: 'Java in a Nutshell'. I found it very helpfull because it contains very good(long and useful) examples that are explained well.

 

[MissouriTiger]

Hi,

I'm not self-taught either, at least not in Java. However, I do a lot research on my own. For that reason I go to a lot of trouble to thoroughly research/seek out the best books on a topic before I jump in. Here are some books that are highly rated by beginners and I have found them very useful. You can research these yourself at Amazon.com. The first 3 are more like tutorials. The last one is more of a reference. Sorry, haven't found any websites (besides this one) useful yet.

"Java For Students" by Bell & Parr

"Java: An Introduction to Computer Science & Programming"
by Savitch

"Java How To Program" by Deitel & Deitel

"Java In a Nutshell" by Flanagan

Unforunately I've been finding that understanding Java isn't the hard part, actually getting the code to compile is the big obstacle for me.

Good luck!

Greg

 

[BlindPete]

I'm self taught. I started with a book Java in 21 days... it gave me a very general understanding of how Java OOP operated, but no solid knowledge base.

Then I downloaded and went through Sun's Java tutorial. I skipped the obvious things and only did those sections where I wanted better understanding.

I also bought a reference book, Complete Java 2 (1000+ pages) with examples. I have found to be very valuable and have dog eared certain sections that I turn to often. In addition I have downloaded all of Sun's Java documentation and bookmarked it to death.

I had already been programming in C++, VFP and VB for years so much of learning Java has been understing their OOP map and language syntax.

There will always be gaps in what I know by learning this way, but it has served me thus far.
-Pete

 

[manu0]

hi

I'm completely self-taught, I was programming much in C language and then I tried to learn C++ and Java.

the first book I read was :
"Practical Object-Oriented Development in C++ and Java"
by Cay S. Horstmann

it's a very good book, not actually for describing all the syntax but the main topics. The book really teach how to program.

manu0

 

[shagymoe]

I am a complete beginner, so it won't be as easy for me to self teach. I am a system/database administrator and would like to learn at least Java and perl.

I've already written my first program. It finds every combination of a certain "number" of numbers in 6 number groups. For instance, it can calculate every possible combination of the numbers 1 through 49 in 6 number groups...i.e. the Ohio lottery.

There are 13.9 million combinations. It takes about 4 minutes to run. And writes it to a text file.

It was fun to do and I am learning, but I know I have a LONG way to go.

I have no one (in person) to ask questions to or learn from or get those ever impressive insider bits of knowlege like......"Don't bother with that.....no one ever uses it anyway....you should focus on THIS."

 

[MissouriTiger]

Hi again Shagymoe,

I said earlier that I'm not self-taught, then I realized I am! I'm taking a class, but the teacher has no real programming experience, and she's from another country and she's difficult to understand. Half of the questionns I ask she can't answer. So everything I've learned has been from books, which is why my code never compiles unless I copy it from a book. I wish I had a mentor too.

Good luck!