Greetings from the East coast to all of my brothers-in-arms!
I have decided to take the plunge with java as my primary language as of this week. Now, before I get ahead of myself, I must say I am rather new to programming, but apparently pretty good at it. I had been a gamer growing up and I remember pretty clearly telling one of my cousins that I would be a programmer around the age of 8, but little did I know the wonders of high school, jobs, and a social life then! Now, I can't even figure out why I waited until I was 24 to really touch this stuff.
I started over the 2013 Winter in a crash course on LabVIEW programming, and to be quite honest, I loved it. Everything seemed so intuitive until I completely reached outside the standard curriculum and into the NI white pages. There, I figured I had to do some soul searching on the subject; am I to stick to a horrendously high-level program architecture which manipulates some great amount of unknowns on my behalf? Or, am I going to have to get gritty?
So, I got to digging.
Java, C#, C++, Python, ForTran, Pascal... so many, and each with their own purposes. I found it to be a kind of information overload, because certainly these programs all have their pros & cons, but the futility of compiling such a list seemed even more certain. So, I did the next best thing... (and don't freak out about this) I flipped a coin using the wikipedia programming list.
I used a splitting approach until I got down to H-I-J, and really, H is the one I landed on, but I have never heard of any of those programs, so naturally, I mulligan and landed J. From which, Java really stood out.
Now, don't get me wrong, I have done a fair bit of looking around before settling with this 'choice', but I had to set my priorities right and decide on languages which worked for me. For now that looks like java with some tertiary programming need-to-knows to help me feel more secure in my own knowledge on the subject.
(Assembly is what I am looking at concurrently)
I have been working on an introduction book, by David Lang, and I am about 250 pages into it. I have written some fifty programs this last two weeks, and while they look like something out of the 80's, I have been really enjoying it. I am excited by how much there is still left to learn and the applications of it all. (Book is over 1200 pages filled with tutorials of all kinds).
I am sure I will be asking questions, sooner rather then later, and I may as well get acquainted with a community in the meanwhile. I look forward to learning from you all!
-Shawn