Re: Complete noob needs guidance on path to learning.

From:

Mark Space <markspace@sbc.global.net>

Newsgroups:

comp.lang.java.programmer

Date:

Wed, 05 Dec 2007 19:58:51 GMT

Message-ID:

<%pD5j.28954$lD6.6263@newssvr27.news.prodigy.net>

Lew wrote:

Google Man wrote:

Would Bruce Eckel's Thinking in Java be a good start?

Mark Space wrote:

I don't care for Mr. Eckel's books personally.

I thought TIJ was great when I was first trying to master Java, back in
1.2 days, but his way of thinking isn't really consonant with how most
of the Java gurus are thinking these days. As I learned more from other
sources I learned better ways of thinking in Java. OTOH, there are
darned few books that even try to get an newcomer thinking in Java in
any manner.

Ten years ago that TIJ have been reasonable, but as you say the state of
the art has advanced quite a bit.

What made OOD/P click for me in Java was just reading and studying a lot
of existing code that was correctly designed. API source code and
JavaDoc, output from the Matisse GUI builder (note: Sun's Swing
tutorials are pretty terrible code examples), Apress's Expert Spring MVC
and Web Flow (which contains a pretty good explanation of Inversion of
Control), books on Design Patterns, etc.

It's better to jump in and start learn the real stuff. The epiphany
will come faster that way.