A
Atreju
Hello all,
My trade is network engineering, support and services. But, on the
side as mostly a hobby, I program. I currently use MS VB6 (try not to
all gasp at once ;-)
I consider myself at the upper-amateur level in terms of VB. However,
I am realizing that more and more over time, the projects I want to
make could be so much more useful and widespread if they were
platform-independent. I wish there were a Visual Basic that ran on a
platform-independent runtime.
That having been said, we all know that VB to Java is an enormous
leap. It is very very different, but that does not mean I couldn't
learn it if I tried hard enough.
What I need advice on is as follows: I want to start off small by
making small projects to completion. I'm so used to the VB IDE that I
have become spoiled. I have done straight coding for various things,
such as C when I was in college, HTML back when people still coded
rather fancy and complex websites using Notepad, and several other
utilities including Dialect, Auto-It, and others. I have also done
some of the more verbose elements of VB by choice, such as using ADODB
coding rather than binding, so I'm not completely afraid of that type
of design, but I am seeing in this era of programming that almost
everyone wants to make things quicker and easier to produce, and as
such, there are emerging IDE products that are getting more and more
user-friendly.
I am well aware that regardless of the IDE, I still need to learn the
language, and I intend to go about that the same way I did VB - get
some books and start learning. I used Teach Yourself series by SAMS
back when I started VB (almost 10 years ago! yikes). When I did start
VB, since it was so easy I made my first project a major undertaking
because I realized that I could do it... BASIC is easy, intuitive and
rather simplistic until you get involved in APIs and such - and even
then it remains rather easy if you're even somewhat sharp. My first
project really got me going (it was called TFCompanion which was a
configuration manager for the online game Team Fortress... over 1000
people downloaded and used and perhaps still use it).
But back to the topic of Java - I need a recommendation on how to
start small and learn more as I go along. I have downloaded Eclipse,
as per my friend's recommendation, and I am also looking at other
things such as Netbeans, and I have heard reference to JSR 273 which
from what I can tell is still work-in-progress.
What do you think would be the best IDE to start off with based on the
following desires:
1. I want the actual design of forms, controls, etc. to be one of the
priorities... in terms of time setting things up and ease of
manipulation.
2. I want something that is intuitive to work with; for example: in VB
I double-click on a button on a form, and it takes me to that button's
click event in the code window. I can also, in the code window, select
any objects or controls from a combobox, and then go to all its
available properties, events and methods, and create a subroutine for
said object.
I do realize Java doesn't work quite this way, but in terms of
ease-of-use, at least for the beginning, I'd like things to be easier
even at the expense of not being the 'best' way to do things.
I am fully aware I am entering an entirely different world of
programming than what I'm used to. But I want to make every effort to
learn, because I'm finding I want to make projects that work straight
from a website, or that work on any OS, even mobile devices, etc. To
the best of my knowledge, Java is THE thing for what I want in the
development world today.
Any thoughts/advice/criticism/comments all welcome. Please let me know
what you think of my perspective, expectations, and if you have any
advice as to where to start. If you have a recommendation on a book to
start with, please do let me know. Many people have different methods
of learning that work for them... I perceive three distinct approaches
that match 3 distinct ways of thinking:
1. The "Dummies" approach - learn nice and slow as though you were in
kindergarten. When you're done with your first lesson, you feel
wonderful! When you finish the entire book you feel that you have been
given an extremely basic and minimally useful tutorial, and you're now
prepared to actually start learning.
2. The "Teach Yourself" approach. I used SAMS "teach yourself Visual
Basic in 21 days" and then "teach yourself More visual basic in 21
days" books, and for my personality those were amazingly effective. I
made incredibly fast progress, and in fact, realistically 21 days was
not an exaggeration.
3. The "Dictionary / Bible" approach. Total referencial material
oriented. I cannot do this, and I find those types of books are better
as a resource once you have some substantial experience.
An ideal person to advise me on this is someone who knows VB and Java
very well - perahps someone who has a lot of VB experience and has
made a successful transition to Java and is happy with the result and
the way they went about it.
I appreciate any help offered.
Thank you in advance.
Dan
My trade is network engineering, support and services. But, on the
side as mostly a hobby, I program. I currently use MS VB6 (try not to
all gasp at once ;-)
I consider myself at the upper-amateur level in terms of VB. However,
I am realizing that more and more over time, the projects I want to
make could be so much more useful and widespread if they were
platform-independent. I wish there were a Visual Basic that ran on a
platform-independent runtime.
That having been said, we all know that VB to Java is an enormous
leap. It is very very different, but that does not mean I couldn't
learn it if I tried hard enough.
What I need advice on is as follows: I want to start off small by
making small projects to completion. I'm so used to the VB IDE that I
have become spoiled. I have done straight coding for various things,
such as C when I was in college, HTML back when people still coded
rather fancy and complex websites using Notepad, and several other
utilities including Dialect, Auto-It, and others. I have also done
some of the more verbose elements of VB by choice, such as using ADODB
coding rather than binding, so I'm not completely afraid of that type
of design, but I am seeing in this era of programming that almost
everyone wants to make things quicker and easier to produce, and as
such, there are emerging IDE products that are getting more and more
user-friendly.
I am well aware that regardless of the IDE, I still need to learn the
language, and I intend to go about that the same way I did VB - get
some books and start learning. I used Teach Yourself series by SAMS
back when I started VB (almost 10 years ago! yikes). When I did start
VB, since it was so easy I made my first project a major undertaking
because I realized that I could do it... BASIC is easy, intuitive and
rather simplistic until you get involved in APIs and such - and even
then it remains rather easy if you're even somewhat sharp. My first
project really got me going (it was called TFCompanion which was a
configuration manager for the online game Team Fortress... over 1000
people downloaded and used and perhaps still use it).
But back to the topic of Java - I need a recommendation on how to
start small and learn more as I go along. I have downloaded Eclipse,
as per my friend's recommendation, and I am also looking at other
things such as Netbeans, and I have heard reference to JSR 273 which
from what I can tell is still work-in-progress.
What do you think would be the best IDE to start off with based on the
following desires:
1. I want the actual design of forms, controls, etc. to be one of the
priorities... in terms of time setting things up and ease of
manipulation.
2. I want something that is intuitive to work with; for example: in VB
I double-click on a button on a form, and it takes me to that button's
click event in the code window. I can also, in the code window, select
any objects or controls from a combobox, and then go to all its
available properties, events and methods, and create a subroutine for
said object.
I do realize Java doesn't work quite this way, but in terms of
ease-of-use, at least for the beginning, I'd like things to be easier
even at the expense of not being the 'best' way to do things.
I am fully aware I am entering an entirely different world of
programming than what I'm used to. But I want to make every effort to
learn, because I'm finding I want to make projects that work straight
from a website, or that work on any OS, even mobile devices, etc. To
the best of my knowledge, Java is THE thing for what I want in the
development world today.
Any thoughts/advice/criticism/comments all welcome. Please let me know
what you think of my perspective, expectations, and if you have any
advice as to where to start. If you have a recommendation on a book to
start with, please do let me know. Many people have different methods
of learning that work for them... I perceive three distinct approaches
that match 3 distinct ways of thinking:
1. The "Dummies" approach - learn nice and slow as though you were in
kindergarten. When you're done with your first lesson, you feel
wonderful! When you finish the entire book you feel that you have been
given an extremely basic and minimally useful tutorial, and you're now
prepared to actually start learning.
2. The "Teach Yourself" approach. I used SAMS "teach yourself Visual
Basic in 21 days" and then "teach yourself More visual basic in 21
days" books, and for my personality those were amazingly effective. I
made incredibly fast progress, and in fact, realistically 21 days was
not an exaggeration.
3. The "Dictionary / Bible" approach. Total referencial material
oriented. I cannot do this, and I find those types of books are better
as a resource once you have some substantial experience.
An ideal person to advise me on this is someone who knows VB and Java
very well - perahps someone who has a lot of VB experience and has
made a successful transition to Java and is happy with the result and
the way they went about it.
I appreciate any help offered.
Thank you in advance.
Dan
).