Suggestions for learning Java.....

[edrest]

Any suggestions for learning Java would be greatly appreciated.

Books....

Web Sources....

Thanks for your help!

 

[jnicho02]

I started with the tutorials on Sun.com and JGuru.com + get an IDE like Sun Forte which generates templates for you.

 

[BlindPete]

I bought a book called Learn Java in 21 Days. I did it in a week and basically found it to be useless after the fact. Stick with the Sun tutorials and documentation.

thats my 2 cents anyway.

 

[fenris]

I find it is always helpful to learn something new by trying to apply it to a problem that you are familiar with. My first problem that I conquered in java was numerical root finding using newton's method (it may not be your cup of tea, but it is an example). Later on I explored text processing, it might not sound glamorous but it teaches you about file i/o and streams. I recently finshed working on a programm that performs multi-threaded file copying. I posted some of the code in this forum if your interested in it.

You never mentioned if this was your first language. Java wasn't my first, but it was the one that gave me the most difficulty. The OO concept was difficult for me to grasp but I quickly found that it was far easier to create complicated projects with it.

Good Luck....

 

[BlindPete]

Fenris is completely correct. Rework a problem you have already solved. That wasy you focus on the syntax and style of Java rather than the logic of the problem itself.

 

[Chrissirhc]

This is the first time I have posted an answer. I've posted questions and figured that everyone should help each other in this place as in thats the way the system works. So I went looking for questions to answer. Plus you see the odd thing that is relavant to you and can learn too. So far your the only one I think I can answer. So you probably can guess how good I am from that. Anyway to learn JAVA;

The first thing is I think is that its not easy to learn programming. You have to practice to learn learn from your mistakes. But my mistake in a way was just writing programs without understanding the key concepts properly. Therefore I may have got the programs to work, but in hind-sight my programs were a bit crap. I recommend a book by IVOR Horton Begining Java there is a JDK 1.3 version out now I think. I've got the begginig JAVA 2 book. Its excellent I've only just started reading it properly and my eyes have been opened. It will teach you if you have programming background or not and key concepts which you need to know are covered in detail with good examples and diagrams. I definetely would spend a long while understanding key concepts such objects and I would learn about static methods, variables. Make sure that you understand the key concepts, e.g. that you don't pass an object as an argument to a method but it just creates a new reference to the object, conversly for variables a copy of the value of the variable is made. If you don't get that then read the book and you will. Follow the examples as well. And after a while once you understand these concepts. You should be able to look at the API documentations and search through to find things you need to make your program work.

Hope this helps
Chris

PS I'm nothing to do with the book. I'm not trying to promote it!!!

Good luck

 

[raioveil]

Try this

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

Good luck !

 

[edrest]

Wow... thanks to all that answered.

My background is in Visual Foxpro and I've been learning Visual Basic...some html and xml and thought that I should probably add Java to that mix.

Thanks again! [sig]<p>Tom Gahagan<br><a href=mailto:edrest@alltel.net>edrest@alltel.net</a><br><a href= > </a><br>REST<br>
<br>
If you get a chance to sit out or dance...<br>
I hope you dance. L Wommack[/sig]

 

[rbobbitt]

More 2 cents...

Java is very easy if you can get your head around the OO concepts, so I would suggest focusing on that. Get so that you _really_ understand things like inheritance and polymorphism and get used to thinking of your program as an interaction of objects rather than a series of steps from point A to point B. If you're already comfortable with this kind of thinking, Java will be a snap.

Like has been mentioned above, there's no substitute for just writing programs, even if you aren't really sure what you're doing!

Regards, [sig]<p>Russ<br><a href=mailto:bobbitts@hotmail.com>bobbitts@hotmail.com</a><br><a href=

http://home.earthlink.net/~bobbitts>Bobbitt

is in</a><br>[/sig]