Thread: Advice

I've been learning java for around a month now, I've used mybringback tutorials and beginner newboston tutorials on youtube alongside many online websites and some books. I understand many of the concepts though I'm getting to a point where I feel I need to start working on some project of my own to get a firm hold of the basics so I can move on, most tutorials on the net at this stage teach some game programming or simple maths problems. Do the users have any other ideas of projects I could have a go at. I don't really have much of an interest in game programming or particular math problems, security is something I find interesting though this requires advance knowledge of languages.

Thank you for taking the time to read my post.
If you feel I should stick it out with some game programming please say.

Game programming has a limited market to my knowledge. When I was in school, our instructor had us do a painting project similar to MS Paint where we created circle, ellipses, etc. and learned how to identify where the mouse was clicking to "adjust" an object. It was fun, yet challenging for me; I started coding in 1984-1985 when OOP wasn't really in fashion.

When it comes to security, it depends on what you want to do. Personally, I like learning reverse engineering (assembly code) because knowing assembly is a gateway to understanding everything in computers and networking. If you enjoy security, there are websites that you can learn hacking (legally) like hackthissite.org, overthewire.org, and smashthestack.org; they deal with knowing javascript, C, and other languages. Hope this helps. Good luck!

Reverse

Thank you guys for taking the time to respond.
reverse-sounds fascinating, I'll be sure to check out the links, at the moment I really need to learn Java as I'm going to study the language in university, though in the future I'd love to learn assembly and reverse engineering.
copeg- I have always thought of data structures and algorithms as an advanced topic, I've learnt about algorithms in the past though at first I really need to practice basic java in a project. I'll check out project euler.
Do you think copying someone else's code and project will help me become better at reading and writing code.

Originally Posted by keepStriving

Thank you guys for taking the time to respond.
reverse-sounds fascinating, I'll be sure to check out the links, at the moment I really need to learn Java as I'm going to study the language in university, though in the future I'd love to learn assembly and reverse engineering.
copeg- I have always thought of data structures and algorithms as an advanced topic, I've learnt about algorithms in the past though at first I really need to practice basic java in a project. I'll check out project euler.
Do you think copying someone else's code and project will help me become better at reading and writing code.

Copying someone else's code will help you become better at reading, but limited at writing in my opinion. I did that for my Java course and it DID make it easier, then it was the tweaking to make it work for the code I was doing (at times tricky). The one problem is that when you don't practice writing and you do an exam, you won't have the practice to pass your exam. I found out in a military training course when we learned Perl that knowing the syntax when it came test time was EVERYTHING and so I practiced coding after school to the point of where someone would ask me to write a short program and I could code quickly and accurately. Hope this helps.

Reverse