Chapter two. Completed!

Alright, so I just finished chapter two and if i do say so myself, the examples brought forth in this chapter were amazing and complex for a new to Java programmer. It was a fun experience, to give you folks an idea of what i mean the first program you are taught to make can be from anywhere from 10 to 20 lines of code. The author then proceeds to have you make changes to that code and each consecutive example gets quite larger, the second example is 40 lines of code. The third example is 67 lines and with the final example being 80 lines.

To those inexperienced in trying to learn a language, 20 to 80 lines of code seems a bit extreme on how to make a Hello World application.  For example this is the standard Hello World application that most tutorials takes you through:

class HelloWorld


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

Now you might wonder why I like the book making me take the longer route to learning this and I'll tell you. I like the book because it has me programming in a window rather than for a console style application (in Windows, your command prompt. in Linux this would be referred to as a Terminal typically) which I find fantastic. Who wants to learn how to program for an what seems an aging system other than for using scripts in Linux and very specific applications in Windows.

For this, i give the book another thumbs up, even the Hello World application(s) were a challenge and i respect that!

On a side note, I'd like to inform folks Ii have found a book to learn Android development once i'm through with this Java book or even most of the way done with it. I'll be reading this book to learn about Android:

Pro Android 2

And now come the inevitable "But Jimbo, why are you picking a PRO book? Aren't you LEARNING Java?". Well, you'd be right in that question but based on reviews on the beginner books and all the other style books, it seems to me that this book covers both the basic and advanced style of approaches and examples. So, I'm getting the Pro book so i can not only learn the basics but learn how to make them into more advanced style apps for my lovely Droid.

I'll hopefully get the Java files uploaded for others to see the code work that this book has you do. Unfortunately due to the preface of the book I may have to modify the code quite drastically or make my own personal changes to it to respect the author's work since it truly is a great book. Since i'll be having to tweak things in the code it may take a bit longer than i want.

Onto chapter three!