Need to know how you guys feel/think?

Question

Hi guys,
As I have posted earlier, I want to pick up Java once again. However, due to my heavy schedule I can only pick it up slowly. But then problems come again. I find that after I've learnt something, I tend to forget as I'm not a real-life Java programmer, you can either called me a leisure Java programmer, or a Java hobbyist. But I do wish that one day I can both program in Java and other programming languages. I hope to create something that is build of Java and other language to talk to each other convieniently.
However, I felt that, without real-life hands-on experience, it's quite hard to put into practice for what you have just learnt! OMG! This is terrible, I feel that I might repeat this forget-pick up loop. Hmm, wondering does it justified with the time I put time?
Guys, can any of you suggest to me anyway I can always put into practice for whatever I have learnt (at least those from Java Tutorial on Sun website)?
Is there anything not too ambitious but could be real-life problem solving and solution that I don't wish to make money, but to keep my hands busy on Java and always remember what I have just learnt?
Any feedbacks and suggestions are highly appreciate.
P/S: I hope this is not a rubbish topic that doesnt worth anyone's reply -.-
Yours sincerely,
Jenson
Message was edited by:
Jenson

Answer 1

I was in a similar situation - I work in IT, but only
program in Java for fun at the moment. You say you
want problem-solving suggestions. Can you think of
any computer-related problems you would like solved?
Everybody has little irritations when working with
computers. Maybe you've been looking for a calendar
application with all the functionality you want? A
timer that will remind you when your favourite tv
programs start? A system for organising your CDs?
Don't worry about it having been done before. There's
loads of resources available, like these forums. I've
learnt loads by poring through the APIs. Start with
something simple, and work your way up if you want.
Right now, I'm working on a swing app which takes a
lot of parameters in a form, and outputs an HTML
template - solves a time-consuming problem for me,
but probably not much use to anyone else!
If you haven't got any ideas straight off, try doing
the homework exercises posted on these forums
(probably best not to spoonfeed the answers though!),
or look at the Java > Student Projects section of
this website:
http://mindprod.com/index.html#MENU
If you're feeling ambitious, this site
(http://acm.uva.es/problemset/) has a large set of
non-language-specific java challenges, but they're
quite a lot more complicated.Hi Kate,
Glad to find someone in the similar situation like me! At least I can learn something from your experiences or so. So far the suggestions that I get is to read up a lot of books. Well, yes, I would love to read up to understand and know how to program in Java, but at the same time I need to know how to do real-life problem solving too. I can't make myself stop programming if I have a strong interest in it and strong desire to improve and never forget what I've learnt!
I have a passion for programming, but at the same time I think I'm somehow very noob in this Java, which I think it's best for me to learn and horn my skills by working on the real-life projects, or at least like what you have done, put your daily problems with Java, hey i never think of this before. But I have one question, wouldn't Java be quite resource intensive if you run those applications on your PC or notebook computer? I'm always reserved for developing Java application that run on my non Intel Core Duo processor based notebook. It's only running on a Pentium M, and it's 2 and a half years old. LOL..
The resources you have just passed to me could be very useful if I'm up to the tasks. I would love to develop something for my own use too! I'm really thinking of doing that even though I'm quite concerned about the afore-mentioned performance issue.
Keeping Java as a hobby is fun and I can always think of something that some other language may not be up to the job, that Java can easily achieve it, or with some efforts. I don't know whether I would ever have the chance to become a Java programmer, but I will definitely be having fun and enjoy programming with Java. I wish to develop something "real" platform-independant, that can talk with different type of application regardless of what's the language used to develop them.
Meanwhile, I think I'm a bit overly ambitious while telling people, I don't mind doing Java game programming too. But I would love to develop games in C if possible. For Java, I would prefer to start from mobile Java games for mobile phones. That would be cool. Imagine myself playing and enjoying the game I have developed and sharing with my friends and people would love that game. Wow, all the efforts pay off.
Mind to share how you learn Java throughout the years? Is it like what you mentioned in your post above? =)