Learning Java

Ye' old general discussion board. Basically, for everything that isn't covered elsewhere. Come here to shoot the breeze, shoot your mouth off, or whatever suits your fancy.
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Maugrim_The_Reaper
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Post by Maugrim_The_Reaper »

I've been refreshing Java (I haven't used it in years - maybe 1998 or so).

If you are familiar with PHP 5, then that's a great deal of the nuts and bolts learning out of the way. Of course that same advantage also applies to other languages... I would suggest looking up changes to Java 1.5 since I've already been using those new things and I certainly liked them (think how you would have managed a variable number of parameters in Java 1.4).

Do I recommend learning it? Why not? I always try to get a foothold in a new language each year. This year it's Java, next year I'll focus on Ruby. Have already worked with Python, and PHP was my language to really work a lot with since last year (had it in tow for "scripting" not true programming before that).

Java is also pretty simple to start with for Desktop apps - get a handle on Spring and Awk and the basics are easy to pick up.
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hawleyjr
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Post by hawleyjr »

The Ninja Space Goat wrote:
Everah wrote:I wonder how complete it could be coming from 1997. Has Java changed much since then? And what the heck are you thinking, moving into programming. Don't you know that is for the 'real' geeks? :wink:
9 years... nah I'm sure everything is exactly the same as it was in 1997. LOL.

I think the book I have is just fine for learning fundamentals (syntax, core classes, etc.) but once I have learned that, I will need a better book. I am definately more interested in learning java because it is OOP completely instead of procedural with oop built in (like php and c++). I think that if nothing else, this will develop my OOP skills in PHP.
There have been a ton of changes to JAVA aka JAVA 2 (Introduced in 98)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_progr ... on_history
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Luke
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Post by Luke »

I have always had a difficult time wrapping my head around binary. I understand the concept... using base 2 instead of base 10... but sometimes when I try to understand concepts which aren't base 10 I get very confused (same way with hexadecimal). Anybody know of a good article or something to understand these concepts?

Is this a correct sequence? If so, what comes next?

0000, 0001
0010, 0011
0100, 0101
0110, 0111

EDIT: I figured it out.
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Luke
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Post by Luke »

I have actually put off learning java for a while, but I was wondering... is Java a good language for me to learn? My main goal is to improve my oop skills and maybe get some perspective from developing oop in something other than php, so I can apply that perspective to my php applications. Does Java fit that goal?
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feyd
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Post by feyd »

It can. Java is the language taught in most schools around here these days instead of C/C++.
matt1019
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Re: Learning Java

Post by matt1019 »

shiznatix wrote:
The Ninja Space Goat wrote:any resources or advice is welcome.
my advice is to not learn java. learn python or C or somthing but java is just so ugly.
Unfortunetly, I will have to sit through a full year of java this comming fall/spring semesters as it's mandetory for all Engr students.

I like C++ and Visual Basic so much better.

I have never even touched JAVA.... I wonder how I will fare.

-Matt
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Luke
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Post by Luke »

Is C++ (generally speaking) liked better than Java? What makes java such a controversial language (if it even is... which it seems like to me)?
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feyd
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Post by feyd »

The Ninja Space Goat wrote:Is C++ (generally speaking) liked better than Java?
For one, it's much older. Since there are still a lot of people out there that "grew up" using C/C++, there's a lot of loyalty.
The Ninja Space Goat wrote:What makes java such a controversial language (if it even is... which it seems like to me)?
It's a rather difficult question to answer. Some say it's too OOP. Everything is an object, and I do mean everything.

Some say it's got a lot of overhead. Some say it's too slow. Others say it's too abstracted from the hardware.

I personally like C# over Java. It's more similar to C/C++ -- my old friend. Yet it's not as OOP crazy as Java. It carries some ideas from Java, C/C++ and Delphi to the table. The only problem I have with it is it's still not quite cross platform. But it is one of the newer languages on the block, so I understand it may take some time to adapt the JIT and CLR across platforms.
matt1019
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Post by matt1019 »

feyd wrote:
The Ninja Space Goat wrote:Is C++ (generally speaking) liked better than Java?
For one, it's much older. Since there are still a lot of people out there that "grew up" using C/C++, there's a lot of loyalty.
The Ninja Space Goat wrote:What makes java such a controversial language (if it even is... which it seems like to me)?
It's a rather difficult question to answer. Some say it's too OOP. Everything is an object, and I do mean everything.

Some say it's got a lot of overhead. Some say it's too slow. Others say it's too abstracted from the hardware.

I personally like C# over Java. It's more similar to C/C++ -- my old friend. Yet it's not as OOP crazy as Java. It carries some ideas from Java, C/C++ and Delphi to the table. The only problem I have with it is it's still not quite cross platform. But it is one of the newer languages on the block, so I understand it may take some time to adapt the JIT and CLR across platforms.
allrighty then,.... some referrence to C#!! go feyd!

I am dying to learn C# (get some basics down, get used to it, that is) because you can make good games with this language.... i believe there was a free seminar (online) at Microsoft... but that was like 2-3years ago...

cant find time from php/c++ right now. and soon java... otherwise, C# is on my to do list.

-Matt
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Luke
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Post by Luke »

well maybe I will research C#, C++, and Java. Any other OOP languages worth putting on the research list?
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neophyte
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Post by neophyte »

I've been thinking about learning Java specifically: Beans, Struts, and JSP. I've looked at it some. I can only think of one website off hand that uses java on the web. But I can't figure out why it isn't more common. Is it a speed issue? Is the language that difficult? Absence of a solid IDE? Or have I not looked around much?
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feyd
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Post by feyd »

Python, C++, C#, Java, Delphi are the notable OOP platforms that come to mind.

For sites that run on Java, or more specifically JSP, one I've worked on (a long time ago, dunno if it's true now) is Andale.com. I've seen others. The JSP pages we used to work on were fast (after bytecode compilation) but the way they were built, I felt was too complicated. It should be of note that at the time, PHP didn't exist and Perl was my "major" language.
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Luke
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Post by Luke »

feyd wrote:It should be of note that at the time, PHP didn't exist and Perl was my "major" language.
8O **throws up**
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neophyte
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Post by neophyte »

With just some brief searching for community forums for java most of what came up was the sun micro sites. I think Feyd may be right when he said *compexity*
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MrPotatoes
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Post by MrPotatoes »

C is so much better and faster and cooler. but i'll say tha java is easy to learn. really easy.

ave fun man, learning more and new <span style='color:blue' title='I&#39;m naughty, are you naughty?'>smurf</span> is always great
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