Re: Error Handling
On Sun, 30 May 2010, Rhino wrote:
"Eric Sosman" <esosman@ieee-dot-org.invalid> wrote in message
news:hts0qe$dnj$1@news.eternal-september.org...
May 17, 2010: "I used to know how to [use instanceof] several years
ago"
Feb 13, 2006[!]: "I've been writing Java code [...] for several years
now and feel that I could do a decent job at an intermediate level"
Dec 22, 2005[!!]: "I've been writing Java for several years"
Dec 6, 2004[!!!]: "I have been writing Java for several years and am
fluent enough that I don't have to post questions here very often"
[!!!!!!!!]
If "several plus five and a half" years of Java experience have left
you unaware of instanceof, baffled by the use of interface types, and
still asking long-winded elementary questions about exceptions, I'd
guess that you will not benefit from any book, however excellent.
Something in your brain resists Java, and you'd just be wasting time
and money trying to pound square-pegged Java into your head's round
hole. Forget Java and take up set design or viola playing or politics
or something -- there must be *some* field for which you have more
talent, because your talent for Java seems small indeed.
As the Brits would say: "Charming!"
I had expected better of you. I certainly hadn't imagined that you would
take time from your busy schedule to research past posts to try to find
things to throw in my face. Try taking nearly four years away from Java
and then see how much YOU remember when you come back to it....
I did - well, except it was nearly ten years rather than nearly four. I
had a paying java job in 1998, then stopped and went off to pursue a
career in biology. Gave up on that in 2008 and returned to the fold. I
wrote the odd bit of java in my time away, but mostly switched to python
for my programming needs. I had quite a bit of catching up to do, and a
lot of stuff to remember, but i did. In fact, it was easy; i suspect
because i'd learned it fairly well before i left, so it call came flooding
back.
The fact that you are not finding it as easy suggests to me that despite
your several years of experience before your break, you had never really
understood java. This fits with an impression that i am developing of you:
you are energetic, interested, and clever, but you are lacking in
attention span. To understand something, you need to take time to sit down
and think about it, really think about it, to do your own reading and work
through problems, learning from them as you do so. From your posts, it
seems like you tend to work in a more reactive, superficial way: hit a
problem, post about it, get answers, try to apply them, then come back
with more questions. There is a flow of information, but it seems to
bypass the part of your brain that does learning. Now, that might actually
be a reasonably effective way of getting things done - indeed, i think it
might be the way in which the vast majority of working programmers
operate! - but it is not a road which leads to mastery.
tom
--
There is no latest trend.