Thread: I have sworn my oath

Greetings from the East coast to all of my brothers-in-arms!

I have decided to take the plunge with java as my primary language as of this week. Now, before I get ahead of myself, I must say I am rather new to programming, but apparently pretty good at it. I had been a gamer growing up and I remember pretty clearly telling one of my cousins that I would be a programmer around the age of 8, but little did I know the wonders of high school, jobs, and a social life then! Now, I can't even figure out why I waited until I was 24 to really touch this stuff.

I started over the 2013 Winter in a crash course on LabVIEW programming, and to be quite honest, I loved it. Everything seemed so intuitive until I completely reached outside the standard curriculum and into the NI white pages. There, I figured I had to do some soul searching on the subject; am I to stick to a horrendously high-level program architecture which manipulates some great amount of unknowns on my behalf? Or, am I going to have to get gritty?

So, I got to digging.

Java, C#, C++, Python, ForTran, Pascal... so many, and each with their own purposes. I found it to be a kind of information overload, because certainly these programs all have their pros & cons, but the futility of compiling such a list seemed even more certain. So, I did the next best thing... (and don't freak out about this) I flipped a coin using the wikipedia programming list.

I used a splitting approach until I got down to H-I-J, and really, H is the one I landed on, but I have never heard of any of those programs, so naturally, I mulligan and landed J. From which, Java really stood out.

Now, don't get me wrong, I have done a fair bit of looking around before settling with this 'choice', but I had to set my priorities right and decide on languages which worked for me. For now that looks like java with some tertiary programming need-to-knows to help me feel more secure in my own knowledge on the subject.
(Assembly is what I am looking at concurrently)

I have been working on an introduction book, by David Lang, and I am about 250 pages into it. I have written some fifty programs this last two weeks, and while they look like something out of the 80's, I have been really enjoying it. I am excited by how much there is still left to learn and the applications of it all. (Book is over 1200 pages filled with tutorials of all kinds).

I am sure I will be asking questions, sooner rather then later, and I may as well get acquainted with a community in the meanwhile. I look forward to learning from you all!

-Shawn

Good luck!

I have just started the journey into the Java programming language during the Thanksgiving break. I have been in my current field for nearly 20 years and have recently decided to move to another area and landed on computer programming. I have experimented with programming in college, but much like you, took another path.

I am currently working through the book "Java-A Beginner's Guide" by Herbert Schildt. I love the coding so far, but feel I need real live examples to help solidify the content. What type of programs are you writing to help solidify what you are learning?

I am just doing the programming tutorials and assignments out of my book. The assignments, about 20 per chapter, don't include actual script so its really dependent on my own scripting and knowledge of the code.

I looked at Unity and Processing, both seem powerful. I have also been looking at java GUI stuff, but for now, they are outside of my programming abilities. I think I will have to make a decision on how I will like to implement the graphics for any program I do choose to make. At this point, I am not even sure how I would compare programs like Unity and Processing to determine which would suit my goals.