How long did it take you to learn?

Hey,

I'm new to java and have been studying it for a week or two now. Just out of curiosity, how long did it take YOU to get the hang of java, I don't mean as in being perfect at it but just good enough.

Share your story :P

Mmm... depends on what you mean by "learn" java. I picked up the basic Syntax and some OOP concepts in maybe a few weeks to a few months, but that's because i've had a few years of other programming experience before learning Java. The hard part isn't learning a language, but it's applying problem solving skills to accomplish a goal. This can take maybe a few years to get the basics down, and then the rest of your life to master/build on top of what you already know, regardless of what language is being used.

I've been at Java for over a year now. I think it only took a few weeks to get the ideas of how to structure code, methods variables, loops, array, objects all that.

However it wasn't until the very end of my second semester that I started to get the idea of Inheritance, Polymorphism and that type of thing. I think a lot of this is due to not needing to do this stuff in tutorials and the very bad method of teaching in the first semester. Actually the classes were great but the tutorials were terrible and often we were just copying and pasting code then making small changes. Also the tutor knew less then me often asking me for help when she couldn't figure something out :P.

Basically I thought I understood it but since the structure of the first semester was very bad I actually didn't, and since the second semester was designed for people with intermediate skills(different colleges) I didn't pick up on it there either.

I got on well without it, but now I'm trying to self teach it and its not so bad and I feel a bit of an eejit that it didn't click before all the theory that I had in my head actually makes sense now. So that's something I think you'd want to watch out for.

I've been using Java for about 3 years now and it didn't take me too long to figure out the basics of the Java 6 SE API however I'm always learning new things as the language evolve, learning new API's as well as studying best practises. Its all good fun :)

However I did have over 10 years of programming background before I started using Java.

// Json

Thanks for all the replies!

I am new to java and I don't quite know what to make of it.. Sometimes I feel as if I'm getting the hang of it but then I look into something very complicated and just get puzzled up and confused. When this happens, I feel that i'll never actually learn it.

I'm slowly losing motivation but i'm gonna keep trying!

The best method to learn Java is to do a little bit each day. If you can't figure something out, leave it for a few hours or longer and then come back to take a fresh look.

And as always, if you're stuck on something you can ask us :)