Learning Java... Complete Newbie

[MCP2000]

Hello Everyone:

I have a background in technology, but it has been on the side of systems administration. I am currently in school for a degree in "general information technology." This degree requires me to take four classes in Java. I have NO experience with programming at all. On top of that, all of the courses in this program are "accelerated", so I only have 5.5 weeks to try to go from not knowing anything about programming to being able to program in Java.

Does anyone have any suggestions for not only learning Java, but also learning basic programming concepts... quickly?? These classes are too expensive to take more than once! Thanks

 

[prosper]

Are you a fast learning person?
If you are hardworking person and you have a friend or instructor who is good at teaching people programming and Java.
You may learn basic knowledge in programming and basic knowledge in Java. Basic knowledge in programming with Java means that you may get the solutions of quadratic equation with Java programming.

You need lots of practise to be familiar with programming.

That friend or instructor has to teach you intensively and you need one or two good textbooks.

 

[Ascalonian]

Personally, I am a book person. Then I can learn on my own pace.

A couple of books that I love are from O'Reilly:

Head First Java

http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596009205/index.html

Head First Programming

http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596514181/index.html

Head First Software Development

http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596527358/index.html

These are great books. Especially the Software Development book. This has become a requirement for my company to read.

 

[tom62]

Apart from getting some good books about programming, see f.i . the list that MikeyJudd posted, it is also a good idea to start a small Java project of your own, after you've completed the course. In that case you can immediately apply what you've learned in a real application. I've found out that learning by doing is (at least for me) the best way to learn a new language.

On the Internet there are many good sites available for beginning Java programmers which can be very helpful to figure things out. For example:

http://math.hws.edu/javanotes/

(Introduction to Programming Using Java, a free online book about Java 5)

http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/

(Sun's Java tutorials) or

http://mindprod.com/jgloss/jgloss.html

(Roedy Green's wonderful website). His Getting Started tips are very good.

Good luck and welcome to the wonderful world of Java!

 

[prosper]

If you have experience in using or modifying bash script or dos
batch script, you may have little concept in using the logic in
programming. There is Object Orient concept in programming in Java and that concept do not appear in bash script. The indentifier(some language call it variable) used in bash script is weak type comparing to the indentifier in Java.

Have you installed JDK on your computer before you post this question?

 

[MCP2000]

I appreciate all of the posts. I have installed JDK on my machine, and I also have NetBeans as an IDE... although I have no idea what I'm doing with it yet.

I don't know how quickly I would learn this language (or any other), because I've never done it. I like to think of myself as pretty bright, but programming appears to be very different from what I have done in the past.

I would REALLY like to learn Java, so that I can actually build applications that I would like without having to submit it as an idea to someone else. I have several things that I would like to create, but I think they would all be pretty advanced... especially considering that I can only make "Hello World" right now!

Again, I do appreicate all of the responses. I am a fairly slow reader due to an eye issue, so I'm not sure that books will be my fastest approach. Thank you, though, for the help!

 

[Dreloch]

The version of the book "Thinking in Java" that I bought came with a disk that presented some the material in a video lecture format if that would help.

As far as IDEs go, the instuctior for my traing classes and the contractors developing the app for where I work use Eclipse. From a relatively new programmer's perspective, it didn't seem too bad.

 

[Diancecht]

If you want to learn the basis, forget about the IDE and start with notepad. After that, Eclipse is the way to go.

Cheers,
Dian