Sunday 11 March 2007

My new Java programming book has arrived!




Finally, now that I have been paid for the first time in three months, I have been able to purchase the text book I need for the Java programming unit I am doing at Murdoch University this semester.

"Java - An introduction to Problem Solving and Programming by Walter Savitch"


I did a bit of research on the book at Amazon and it got rave reviews so I was happy to purchase it.
I had also considered using "Head First Java" which appears to use a very interesting way of teaching Java.

I completed a term of Java programming (and managed to pass) last year so I have a reasonable grasp of the basics but I am still not that confident.
Although I thoroughly enjoy and obtain a great deal of satisfaction from programming, much to my surprise initially, I still approach programming tasks with some level of concern particularly when a new Lab assignment becomes available!

I have managed to get through the first two labs this semester without the textbook but I am very glad to have it now as we move in to object orientated programming.

I am using Netbeans 5.5 as an IDE previously having done all my programming in a text editor and I am finding it eases the programming process greatly by:
  • adding curly brackets automatically which can be a source of great frustration if you loose track of them in a text editor
  • automatically spaces the code with tabs so as you end up with nice looking code - a perennial frustration for my tutor last semester as I never managed to layout code to his satisfaction
  • providing much better error resolution resources - even making the odd suggestion or two!
  • many more things I have probably not discovered yet!
Any other Java students out there using Netbeans for their coding?
I would love to hear of your experiences with it!




1 comment:

  1. I'm not a Java student but simply a freelance learner. I tried using NetBeans originally and it's ok, but I found it was a little too heavy an IDE.

    If you're looking for something along the same lines I enjoyed the NetBeans-BluJ variant which calmed down the interface a bit while still being as helpful.

    That said I've found that I rather do most of my coding in gVim. It's still more helpful than a flat text editor but at the same time is a LOT lighter than NetBeans.
    It does teach you some pretty funny habits. The number of times I've tried to save files in word by hitting *esc*-:wq ... -_-

    gVim is a rather hard editor to get into but once you learn it you can start doing some pretty complex edits to your code very quickly, and it's a good editor to know how to use in general...

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