Thread: Share your story with Java?

Hey everyone!

I'm new to this forum and this is gonna be my first post here...

My name is Baggio and I'm a newbie programmer, and it seems to be that everyone here are really great fans of Java (I'm becoming one myself ).

To give a brief intro of me and Java, I've kinda like picked up Java two years ago out of interest, but due to time restraints (euphemism for 'lack of perseverance' *coughs*), I left the learning curve at polymorphism and inheritance (in the order of your typical java book). And now, I'm in uni (yup, I'm a student), and I've chosen software engineering as my major, and the first prerequisite for the major? Java.

I'm actually really interested in programming (granted, it does drive me crazy sometimes, especially when dealing with nested for loops, gosh, I'm the most all-over-the-place person you can imagine, and here I am taking on a logical discipline. I guess that's just life, eh?), but lately, I've been feeling a bit frustrated since we freshmen are required to master the language (to the extent of GUI manipulation) in 4 months (1 has already passed), and to top that off, I have to learn the language listening to my professor explaining concepts...in Chinese (yes, I am studying in China, bleh)!

So, long story short, I came for a bit of advice, a bit of inspiration, from you guys, if you can possibly share a bit of your own experiences with Java in your first days with it, and how you came about to learn it.

So, here are my two questions...

1. Why did you learn Java in the first place? Work? School? Pure interest?
2. How did you learn Java in the first place (methodologies and stuff)? Did you read lots of books? Did you do lots of practice exercises? Did you go to courses and met other programmers and had a chance to exchange ideas and stuff?

If you could add a couple of thoughts, and maybe a couple of pointers for total beginners such as myself, I would really appreciate it.

Thanks to all who're passing by, and happy Java programming!

Warm regards,
Baggio.

professor explaining concepts...in Chinese

zhende ma? Bu keyi!

I hope your Chinese is better than mine! I learned Java at the tender age of 30-something. I went back to Uni to do a PhD, needed lots of CPUs to run Genetic Algorithms on, no funding for hardware, so dug old PCs/Macs/Suns out of skips and made a 'Low Performance Cluster'. Java was the language that promised "Write Once, Run Anywhere", so I was living the dream for a couple of years. I was finding a lot of Sun Ultras at the time, so briefly considered writing all my research code in C on the Sun-4u platform. Somebody offered me an invitation to a new email service at the time where my name was already taken, so that's the source of my nerdnickname too.

I knew nothing about Java but as a cash-strapped postgrad, jumped at the offer of paid assisting in the 1st year Java programming labs. Watching other people make errors and spotting how to fix them is a great way to get acquainted with a new language - it's too easy to boil your head if you sit down and stare at the same problem for hours. For my own work, I just downloaded the API documentation and tutorials and tried to understand everything in it. I'm still trying!

Good luck with your studies.

Originally Posted by imicrothinking

1. Why did you learn Java in the first place? Work? School? Pure interest?
2. How did you learn Java in the first place (methodologies and stuff)? Did you read lots of books? Did you do lots of practice exercises? Did you go to courses and met other programmers and had a chance to exchange ideas and stuff?

Actually I learnt about programming by asking two people what the were talking about. Lol. Two friends chating while playing game. And slowly (with the help of the members on the site) I got enough info to know I liked it(actually I like making any thing, and being told I could make a game like Rise and Ruin is enough to get me coding ). So its pure interest.

I picked Java cause they told me it will be better than starting with C or C++, easier and a good stepping stone to the rest esp since its an OOPL.

Originally Posted by imicrothinking

To give a brief intro of me and Java, I've kinda like picked up Java two years ago out of interest, but due to time restraints (euphemism for 'lack of perseverance' *coughs*), I left the learning curve at polymorphism and inheritance (in the order of your typical java book). And now, I'm in uni (yup, I'm a student), and I've chosen software engineering as my major, and the first prerequisite for the major? Java.

Yea sometimes it is hard when your teaching your self, see this you might like http://www.javaprogrammingforums.com...-together.html , I think it will help getting sidetracked. ;D

I took a Java course at community college almost by chance when I was concentrating on taking courses on something else.

I'm a recreactional/project programmer who had worked for decades in a variety of other languages.