Save Yourself A Fortune Here (Java in general)

Member Name: wampyrii

Product:	Java in general
Date:	13/10/01 (76 review reads)
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Anyone who usess the web will have encountered Java more times than they could possibly ever dream of. Many of the games, animations, applet windows you see are written in the Java language. Of course, as a general web user you have absolutely no need to know this and no reason whatsoever to care. ou load the page, let the Java virtual machine do its thing and get on with your browsing. If on the other hand you have more than just a passing interest in Java and even might want to try your hand at learning Java either for fun, profit or enforced learning(my case) then read on...

I'm not going to say much here, just give you the chance to save yourself more than few pennies if you decide that you might like to learn Java. Java is effectively a language just like any other. You learn it just like any other and once you have become fluent in it you can start putting it to some use. Your computer however has its own language, called machine code, which is literally a collection of 1s and 0s which, although not impossible for humans to use, would be incredibly foolish to even dream of using to write a program with. As a result you use what are known a higher level languages and then use another program called a translator or interpretter to turn the program which we understand into a program which the computer can understand. Java is an example of a higher level language, others including Pascal, Fortran, Cobol, Visual Basic and C++ which is probably the closest relative you will find to Java. A Java program can be written anywhere, be it a piece of paper, or more usefully in a wordprocessor etc. but the computer will not understand it until it has been interpretted.

Which is where the expense comes in.

I could write a program right here and now in Java:

class Hello
{
public static void main (String[] args )
{
System.out.println("Hello World!");
}
}

which will make sense to me,
and other Java programmers and no doubt anyone else who has touched programming because its the most simple program you can write and the one which just about every training text will start you off with. Its simply outputs Hello World! on the screen for anyone intrigued. Now to a computer this makes no sense because what it needs to see is 000100100010010010010010001000100011.....etc. so for this to be achieve we need to buy a program which will interpret it....which can cost the big bucks!

A lot of student friends of mine rushed out in the Summer holidays and purchased a proffessional package like J-Builder or suchlike for a tidy couple of hundred quid...but there is literally NO NEED to do this. Sure, you get a package which is neatly tarted up, but at the end of the day that is all you get - well, all you get for a beginner programmer. You will have no need of the tools etc. you have in this package, not for a long while after purchase so you might as well go for the entirely free alternative - and one which works equally well, and in some cases better. Sun Microsystems offers a program called the Java Development Kit(JDK) completely free for donwload from their site:

http://java.sun.com/products/jdk/1.1/

It comes in at around 20Mb in size with an extra 9Mb to download if you want the rather large instruction manual(also searchable on the site). Personally, I have used both this and J-Builder and to be honest I prefer the free version - and its the software package of choice for my university! Installation is easy and once installed you are literally ready to go...

But then of course you'll want to learn Java. well, you can go on an expensive course somewhere or purchase a bunch of books like Java for Dummies to get started...or you can save yourself a bunch more money and simply learn online. there are loads of resources online to teach you how to program in Java - or at least how to get to a good beginner grade, many of t
hem far far better than any books I have come across. Sun Microsystems itself offers a tutorial for learning Java which is good for checking back to:

http://java.sun.com/

but a much better one can be found at:

http://chortle.ccsu.ctstateu.edu/cs151/cs151ja va.html

This is an online book from a lecturer at the Central Connecticut State University in the USA. Its written in a plain simple style and is extremely easy to read and learn from it. There are around 80 chapters each with accompanying flashcards, quizzes and programming exercises for you to try - its brilliant. I used this more last year than my lecture notes...lol.

Using just these two sites you are guaranteed to save a bundle on Java programming so its well worth checking them out if you are looking to learn the language.

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