L
Lee
I'm looking for some helpful comments on the relative merits of free (as
in beer) on line tutorials, or recommendation to good Java books
(not necesarily free books but cost is a consideration)
I'm not a beginner in the programming world in general. My first
language was FORTRAN II (yeah, yeah, we programmed by making marks in
wet clay bricks which were then baked to compile, and we dodged
dinosours and cave bears on the way to work)
I taught myself C by first reading K&R then programming a lot and
reading other peoples code. At some point someone showed me that I was
really writing Fortran in C, not idiomatic C, so I made an effort (more
code reading and some concious attention to style) to write real C.
I can do some damage in awk and perl and so on.
Lately I've not been writing in C, but I have been coding in PL/SQL
which is Oracle's proprietary procedural language.
It has "packages" which separate interface specification from
implememtation (something like Java interface objects) and also has an
exception handling system which, while not syntactically much like
Java's, seems conceptually similar to the try{}catch{} business.
I cant say I'm an expert at OO concepts or design, but I can quack
"polymorphism, data hiding, and late binding" as well as anyone else,
and I have a passing acquaintance with the idea of design patterns and
the "Gang of Four".
I'm looking first for material that can get me up to speed soonest, but
also for something that will get me into the OO world so that I dont
wind up writing C in JAva, if you know what I mean.
I find I can often decipher at a good part of an existing Java program,
but very often I recognize that I couldnt have written it, because who
knew you that there even was a "foozle" object, let alone that you had
to give it the "goosey" message to initialize the sytem.
I you knew the rules of C, but not the standard library, you'ld be "at
sea" no pun in writing a real program, so maybe there are a set of more
or less standard objects that everybody "knows" how to tickle; but since
I dont know 'em, I need a systematic introduction.
I dont need a "how to program in general" book (Or not any more than
everybody needs one actually. Amazing to see what some so called
professional programmers are churning out. Eek!)
I suppose my ideal title is "So you want to program in JAva, eh, Binky?"
i.e. dont need sermons on why data hiding is "a good thing" or a long
exposition about control structures or data types or whatever, just a
whole lot of "Here's what you need to know first, with plenty example code".
What do people here think of "Thinking in JAva" ?
What about the "Head First Java" thing?
Any favorite books? What about anti-favorites ?
Anything to particularly stay away from?
in beer) on line tutorials, or recommendation to good Java books
(not necesarily free books but cost is a consideration)
I'm not a beginner in the programming world in general. My first
language was FORTRAN II (yeah, yeah, we programmed by making marks in
wet clay bricks which were then baked to compile, and we dodged
dinosours and cave bears on the way to work)
I taught myself C by first reading K&R then programming a lot and
reading other peoples code. At some point someone showed me that I was
really writing Fortran in C, not idiomatic C, so I made an effort (more
code reading and some concious attention to style) to write real C.
I can do some damage in awk and perl and so on.
Lately I've not been writing in C, but I have been coding in PL/SQL
which is Oracle's proprietary procedural language.
It has "packages" which separate interface specification from
implememtation (something like Java interface objects) and also has an
exception handling system which, while not syntactically much like
Java's, seems conceptually similar to the try{}catch{} business.
I cant say I'm an expert at OO concepts or design, but I can quack
"polymorphism, data hiding, and late binding" as well as anyone else,
and I have a passing acquaintance with the idea of design patterns and
the "Gang of Four".
I'm looking first for material that can get me up to speed soonest, but
also for something that will get me into the OO world so that I dont
wind up writing C in JAva, if you know what I mean.
I find I can often decipher at a good part of an existing Java program,
but very often I recognize that I couldnt have written it, because who
knew you that there even was a "foozle" object, let alone that you had
to give it the "goosey" message to initialize the sytem.
I you knew the rules of C, but not the standard library, you'ld be "at
sea" no pun in writing a real program, so maybe there are a set of more
or less standard objects that everybody "knows" how to tickle; but since
I dont know 'em, I need a systematic introduction.
I dont need a "how to program in general" book (Or not any more than
everybody needs one actually. Amazing to see what some so called
professional programmers are churning out. Eek!)
I suppose my ideal title is "So you want to program in JAva, eh, Binky?"
i.e. dont need sermons on why data hiding is "a good thing" or a long
exposition about control structures or data types or whatever, just a
whole lot of "Here's what you need to know first, with plenty example code".
What do people here think of "Thinking in JAva" ?
What about the "Head First Java" thing?
Any favorite books? What about anti-favorites ?
Anything to particularly stay away from?