Re: I've Read A Intro Book To Java, What's Next?

Mark Space wrote:
Try Sang Shin's intro to programming course. He does a very reasonable job of starting you off with very small programs, then he continues with reasonable small examples for you to extend and test your knowledge. He also has NetBeans projects with all the examples so you can start by just looking at the code.

The class is now to far advanced for you to catch up, I think. But you can always just work on the examples, since everything is posted on the web. There's no "lecture" or other hands on by Shin, so you aren't missing anything.

I'd add a slightly hesitant recommendation for "The Practice of Programming" by Kernighan and Pike. I think its an excellent book and needs to be in the personal library of every serious programmer because it covers everything from sensible ways of laying out readable code through to debugging and (most important) designing code for ease of debugging. Its probably a good book to get when you think you're getting to understand Java. To help you along with your own initial projects it has good development examples and exercises.

I said hesitant because it mixes examples in C, C++ and Java into most chapters, but on the other hand its a fairly thin (15mm) and inexpensive paperback and, like everything I've read by Brian Kernighan, is very well written.

Summary: take a look at it: if you like the book you may find that Java
for Dummies plus this will get you quite well along.

Tools: I'm firmly of the opinion that Java is best learnt using only your favorite text editor, the latest Sun Java SDK and a command line.
Admittedly its easier with a decent command shell in place of the DOS/Windows abomination, but it can be done - I did it.

Next consider adding ant to your toolkit. Finally, when you understand the basics of writing and building Java code it might be time to look at IDEs. Me? I don't use 'em.


--
martin@ | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
org |
.

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