API and its use...

Question

I am wondering how to use the class and method definitions and descriptions of the API effectivelly. I mean would it be better if i just directly search for tutorials or examples and skip viewing the API? I look at the API definitions, i understand the content but i don't know how to use them exactly. Consider that i have almost none programming experience and have just recently learnt the basics of JAVA. Any opinions?

Answer 1

@OP:
Assuming your question is, "should I use the API docs or the tutorials?" the answer is "both." If you're really a beginniner to Java and to pogramming, then just the API docs will be hard to follow. Nevertheless, if you're going to do anything more than copy code out of the book, you're going to have to learn to use those docs.
I'd suggest you go through the tutorials, books, etc., but as you're reading and/or typing the sample code, refer to the API docs for the classes and methods being used. The tutorials will provide the introduction you need, but the API docs (and sometimes the JLS, though that's even harder to read for a newbie) will provide more detail. The API docs are also somewhat more authoritative than the tutuorials. There are some cases where they have errors or ambiguous wordings, but I'd still put them ahead of any book or tutorial as the "final word" on how the classes are supposed to behave.