Comments on: Trying to learn Java

By: zorg

zorg — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 11:17:08 +0000

@jordan

I forgot macros (metaprogramming) and Tail Call Optimization !

By: zorg

zorg — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 13:08:24 +0000

@perusio

yes, lexically scoped closures came from Scheme (see Clinger’s Scheme 33 paper), lambdas were introduced by Lisp over 50 years ago, but without closures (see funarg on Wikipedia). Scheme got lambdas right.

@Jordan

Scheme is used as an introduction to programming because its syntax is simple, the language is very lightweight (the core language is the lambda-calculus + assignment), features powerful abstraction mechanisms in the guise of first class functions and first class continuations and as such is ideal to introduces the basic concepts of CS. And here’s the point: when you understand the basic tenets of CS you can learn about any language.

By: Daquan Wright

Daquan Wright — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 09:09:42 +0000

If you’re not liking it, just switch it up for something you do like.

Expect some things to be dull, even the boring parts are important. It’s all about building that foundation, no matter the cost. It’s fine if you struggle with it as well. I’m pretty sure most people aren’t geniuses and automatically know everything. Anything worth knowing is going to take time and an investment from yourself. I believe that is worth having.

By: William

William — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 01:16:27 +0000

James,
While I think it’s applaudable that you are jumping ahead in the coursework, take some advice. Don’t spend too much time on it, just enough to get the A. There are many more important things to be doing at uni.
But if you feel compelled to do something interesting and web related in Java, why not play with GWT and compared to the JS you know.. And that can keep the blog kinda on topic 😉

By: mew

mew — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 19:50:54 +0000

imo
attend first year to get a handle on the social and achedemic scene, but
don’t enroll in 2nd year,
instead hang around working part time to pay the bills, attending classes to learn — save yourself the debt

You’re a talented and knowledgeable developer already… going in to debt only to have the opportunity to be judged by the estblishement is questionable — in the end your employers aren’t likely going to care if you’ve gone to university. This is double significant if you plan on doing the startup thing…

lots can be learned at university…. but when it comes to web work academia is generally so far behind that their approval of your skill is largely irrelevant.

that said, social and intelletually university is great…

By: Georg

Georg — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 15:11:50 +0000

@Jordan @perusio
I also learned scheme and prolog in the first year of university. This is only because the university wants to give you a round up about what is out there. The problem with this is, it lacks (at least here in germany) the practical side. I surely learned a lot, but I didn’t used it, so I forgot already most of this stuff.
But i do remember the time we spend in a learning group leraning scheme and for every problem we did make up trying to write the shortest solution. That was fun. I am glad I have been gone through with it, but I really think, I could have been spend my time a little more valuable.

And I now know: Computer Science is the last thing I would study if I had the chance to start over again. (And again: at least here in germany.)

But I wish you good luck with that, have fun and do something worthful with your sparetime. And blog about some interessting stuff, so I can remember what I already forgot.

By: Jordan

Jordan — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 12:42:55 +0000

@perusio
Sure, Scheme is powerful and certainly has its uses. However I don’t agree with the use of it as an introduction to programming, since it is so different to the majority of languages actually in use, and in my opinion much more difficult to follow for new programmers.

@kelvin
Totally agree with your second comment 😀

By: perusio

perusio — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 02:13:17 +0000

I’m appalled with the comments regarding Scheme. It’s the other way around: Java is the “retarded” language. I was hoping for CS students to have a clue about the history of programming languages.

Lisp like languages were and are way ahead of Java. And @Mark. It doesn’t have any syntax: everything is an s-expression.

People here don’t seem to have a clue about the genesis of Smalltalk and how Alan Kay was influenced by Lisp’s design. So he says.

And yes Lisp has OOP. In a way that Java doesn’t have. I believe that was Gosling
that said that Java was a language for “average programmers”.

The Crockford that is cited above has stated that Brendan Eich’s first idea for the “browser language” was Scheme. Closures and Lambdas (anonymous functions) came from Scheme, I suspect. There are a lot of nice things in JavaScript and most of them came from Lisp/Scheme. The same goes for Ruby.

For a Lisp like language that functions on top of a Java VM, in active development see Clojure.

By: Kelvin Luck

Kelvin Luck — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 13:05:52 +0000

Oh yeah… And Uni isn’t really about what happens in the classrooms or on your course anyway! It’s all the other fun stuff that’s what makes it so worthwhile 😀

By: Kelvin Luck

Kelvin Luck — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 13:03:27 +0000

Java is a useful language to learn in terms of OO concepts and stuff. They only started teaching it when I got to the third year of Uni (10 years ago!) but I learnt it for a year and it’s come in handy since (directly with writing socket servers for flash games and indirectly with the OO stuff it taught me etc) although I don’t use it that often. Learning java makes lots of other languages very easy to learn too (e.g. c#, as3 etc). In terms of learning, our textbook was “Thinking in Java” by Bruce Eckel and it was pretty decent. I think it’s available for free download too…

In terms of finding a project to interest you, maybe have a look at processing as that gets to the interesting/ pretty stuff a lot quicker. Or maybe into development for Android (something I’m starting to look into myself). In both of those cases your canvas is a bit more interesting than an empty commandline!