[ale] good website for novice learning Java ?

[Charles Shapiro]

Grit your teeth and buy a book. I'm fond of Bruce Eckel's _Thinking_in_Java_
( http://mindview.net/Books/TIJ4 ).
Download and install the jdk from sun on your machine. Read all the chapters
and do all the examples.
I made a point of not using an IDE, so I could get a real feel for the
language itself and how the naked compiler actually reacted to my errors.
Most of the  stuff in Eckel's book is simple enough to  do from the command
line, but  eventually you'll probably want to gain familiarity with  ANT (
http://ant.apache.org/), which is the java equivalent of make(1).  If you
do this early on it may well make your learning experience a little easier.

BTW if you're a _complete_ novice and this is your first foray into
programming or your first foray into Object Oriented programming, I'd
recommend python ( http://www.python.org/ ) instead of java. It's got all
the crunchy OO goodness of java but lacks many of Java's irritations (e.g.
the explicit compile step, Java's wonky handling of the OS interface, Java's
distinction between 'primitive types' and 'objects')  Of course, you may be
constrained to learn java by --say-- a boss who's offering a carrot or
threatening with a stick.

-- CHS



On 10/12/06, Courtney Thomas <courtneycthomas at bellsouth.net> wrote:
>
> I know Sun has a ton of stuff re:java but I'm lookin' for
> a beginner's site that is more navigable and transparent.
>
> Thank you once more,
> Courtney
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> Ale at ale.org
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>
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