Prep for Beginning CSIS: Java Programming

Question

I am going to begin my Computer Science & Information Systems degree in April. My first class is an introduction to Java programming.

Lately I have had an interest in Objective-C, but slowly declined due to lack of persistence and comprehension difficulties, (mostly some OOP). Obviously I would like to do well in my classes, so I am asking what is the best way for me to prepare?

Should I complete the Alice training and then start learning some Java on my own? Continue to work through Objective-C religiously until I see results? What do you think a newby should do?

edit: I have been reading reviews for a lot of Java books, just curious, are there any other well written beginner books? Thanks!

Answer 1

Objective-C probably has some barriers that will be problematic if you're learning.

I would suggest picking up a copy of either Thinking in Java or Head First Java and reading through that to get started.

When you're learning it can be useful to not be distracted by too many details. Master the basics. Learn about basic OO design. Frustration is the biggest enemy. If what you're doing seems daunting, the greater the chance you'll just give up. So keep it simple so each time you do something it feels like you're making progress.

Answer 2

Firstly pick one of the two languages, either Objective-C or Java, as learning both at once might not give you encouraging results and you're gonna have a lot on your hands than you can handle at one time. So, I'd suggest you go ahead with Java as Java is also going to be your first class. Java is huge, so keep it simple in the beginning and concentrate more on the fundamentals and you can build on top of that as you progress. And you can always ask questions here on SO. Also you probably might find the java classes easy as you've already been doing your homework.

In addition to the java books already mentioned, I'd suggest you go ahead with the Sun's java tutorials.

As a java beginner, you might also find this free book helpful:

http://www.greenteapress.com/thinkapjava/

Answer 3

I think one of the best ways of learning the basics of programming these days is by playing with Ruby. You will have to spend something close to 0% of your time worrying about infrastructure issues (compilers, header search paths, etc), and you can experiment with the interactive mode (irb) to rapidly learn how to use various features.

You can start out with Ruby without having any concept of what objects or functions are, yet you will gradually learn about quite advanced object oriented topics, and even functional programming-style patterns.

Chris Pine's "Learn to Program" teaches the basics of programming using Ruby. I haven't read it, but had a look and it made a good impression.

(There are also many other books teaching Ruby.)

There is nothing inherently bad about learning programming through Java, and it gives you a general understanding of OO design, but it is a pretty limited language. Ruby is just much more fun and you get to learn a lot of advanced techniques that aren't even possible to use in Java by just experimenting with it––many of which will be useful when you're learning Objective-C later.