When I went to college, I was originally a Civil Engineering major. All engineering majors were required to take an "Intro to Programming" course taught in FORTRAN.
My previous BASIC exposure helped me code in circles around my classmates. It was pretty obvious then that having previous BASIC experience was a great asset.
I enjoyed my FORTRAN class so much that I decided to switch majors to computer science, where I had to take another "Intro to Programming" class, this time in Pascal. Again, previous BASIC exposure had me way ahead of my classmates.
I have always been puzzled by Dijkstra's dislike of BASIC, you could certainly notice a big difference between students who, like me, had been previously exposed to programming and those who hadn't. And back in those days, most personal computers came with a BASIC interpreter, therefore "previous exposure to programming" pretty much meant "exposure to BASIC".
The vast majority of Java jobs out there are for J2EE/Java EE, which is server side Java.
There are a gazillion Java web frameworks out there. Two of the most popular are JavaServer Faces (JSF) and Struts 1.
Struts is old, it has been around for about 10 years or so. It is not glamorous anymore, but there is so much code written in it that you pretty much cannot avoid working with it.
JSF is Sun's (Oracle's?) attempt to have a standard framework. You may read a lot of hateful posts about JSF, but personally I think it is pretty good. JSF 2.0 is awesome, but it is also very new and most companies have not adopted it yet.
Learn Enterprise Java Beans (EJB's) EJB 2.x and before was a nightmare to work on, but 3.0 and 3.1 is actually very nice.
Learn an Object Relational Mapping framework. These days Hibernate has the most mindshare. The Java Persistence API is Java EE 5/6 standard ORM tool. Newer versions of Hibernate are JPA implementations, adding their own "enhancements" that are not portable to other JPA implementations.
As a development environment, I would recommend the NetBeans/GlassFish combo for a beginner. This combination will let you focus on developing/deploying code without having to worry about application server configuration and what not.
GlassFish competes directly with Oracle AS, and Weblogic (which Oracle acquired through BEA's acquisition a while back).
NetBeans competes directly with Oracle's JDeveloper.
I wonder if Oracle will keep these tools around. Personally, I think Oracle would be a fool not to. The NetBeans/GlassFish combo is by far the most productive way to develop server side Java Applications.
I was amazed at all the quality links and informative comments.
For whatever reason, I didn't bookmark the site after I visited for the first time, then for the life of me I couldn't remember the URL.
I kept searching for "news for geeks" (which I swore was the tagline of that awesome site I stumbled upon) in Yahoo (this was before Google rose to the top of the search engines) but didn't get any good results.
After a while I somehow found Slashdot again, and had a "do'h" moment when I saw that the tagline was "News for nerds", not "News for geeks" as I remembered it.
It took me a while to actually create an account, oh, how I wish my account number was even lower.
In any case, I'm glad to have been a part of the Slashdot community for the most part of my professional life.
Thanks Slashdot, for keeping us all in the loop of the latest happenings in the technology world.
What would happen to Solaris, GlassFish, NetBeans, etc?
The NetBeans/GlassFish combo is a killer combination for developing Java EE/J2EE applications. I would hate to see those two products disappear, since they compete directly with Eclipse and Websphere from IBM.
Sun's Java has been available in binary form for as long I've been using Linux (I started using Linux in 1994).
Quite an amazing feat since Java didn't come out until 1995. When I first started working with Java (1996) there was no official Sun Java under Linux, there was a port from BlackDown (their web site seems to have gone AWOL recently).
I can't remember exactly when Sun added Linux as an officially supported platform, however I know it wasn't from the get go. As a matter of fact, the number one bug in Sun's Java Bug Parade for a long time was a petition to officially support Linux.
About a year and a half ago I bought an AMD 64 laptop. I dualboot 64bit Fedora and 32 bit XP (came preinstalled, hardly ever use it).
The only (minor) problems I've had is that there is no 64 bit version of the Java plugin, and there is no 64 version of Flash player, therefore I run a 32 bit version of Firefox with the 32 bit version of the Java plugin and Flash player.
I'm still on FC 5, which includes a 32 bit version of OpenOffice.org, runs just fine (I heard that FC 6 includes a 64 bit version of OO.o).
Funny you should say that. I migrated from Ubuntu to Fedora because Fedora supported my hardware *better* than Ubuntu.
The hardware in question is 64 bit HP ZV6000 series laptop. The included ATI XPRESS 200M video card is problematic under Linux (at least it was when I got the laptop about a year and a half ago). Ubuntu would not run X at all. Fedora worked "out of the box" (with the VESA Driver, but still...).
To save you the trouble, here are some screenshots of JDK 1.6 (mustang) running on Linux under GTK. Notice how Swing adapts to the user's desktop theme.
Slashdot Mirror
Atari 800 rules!
When I went to college, I was originally a Civil Engineering major. All engineering majors were required to take an "Intro to Programming" course taught in FORTRAN.
My previous BASIC exposure helped me code in circles around my classmates. It was pretty obvious then that having previous BASIC experience was a great asset.
I enjoyed my FORTRAN class so much that I decided to switch majors to computer science, where I had to take another "Intro to Programming" class, this time in Pascal. Again, previous BASIC exposure had me way ahead of my classmates.
I have always been puzzled by Dijkstra's dislike of BASIC, you could certainly notice a big difference between students who, like me, had been previously exposed to programming and those who hadn't. And back in those days, most personal computers came with a BASIC interpreter, therefore "previous exposure to programming" pretty much meant "exposure to BASIC".
The vast majority of Java jobs out there are for J2EE/Java EE, which is server side Java.
There are a gazillion Java web frameworks out there. Two of the most popular are JavaServer Faces (JSF) and Struts 1.
Struts is old, it has been around for about 10 years or so. It is not glamorous anymore, but there is so much code written in it that you pretty much cannot avoid working with it.
JSF is Sun's (Oracle's?) attempt to have a standard framework. You may read a lot of hateful posts about JSF, but personally I think it is pretty good. JSF 2.0 is awesome, but it is also very new and most companies have not adopted it yet.
Learn Enterprise Java Beans (EJB's) EJB 2.x and before was a nightmare to work on, but 3.0 and 3.1 is actually very nice.
Learn an Object Relational Mapping framework. These days Hibernate has the most mindshare. The Java Persistence API is Java EE 5/6 standard ORM tool. Newer versions of Hibernate are JPA implementations, adding their own "enhancements" that are not portable to other JPA implementations.
As a development environment, I would recommend the NetBeans/GlassFish combo for a beginner. This combination will let you focus on developing/deploying code without having to worry about application server configuration and what not.
I presume Oracle will keep at least one application server / EE environment and IDE alive.
No doubt Oracle will keep at least one app server/IDE alive, the question is, which one?
Oracle App Server, Weblogic or GlassFish?
JDeveloper or NetBeans?
GlassFish competes directly with Oracle AS, and Weblogic (which Oracle acquired through BEA's acquisition a while back).
NetBeans competes directly with Oracle's JDeveloper.
I wonder if Oracle will keep these tools around. Personally, I think Oracle would be a fool not to. The NetBeans/GlassFish combo is by far the most productive way to develop server side Java Applications.
Monty is going to have a fit.
I get a lot too. I hardly ever use them up.
I moderate the occasional insightful or informative comment I run into as I browse the comments , but I don't go looking for comments to moderate.
A day or two after my mod points expire I get 15 more, and I go through the cycle of using a couple of them again.
Rinse, lather, repeat
Same here. I wonder if it's because I don't post much?
I don't know how you still have your bookmarks from 1999, but your comment made me curious.
I googled my username with results limited to http://slashdot.org/ and the oldest comment I could find was from October 15th, 1999.
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/10/15/1224252
That day (http://slashdot.org/index.pl?issue=19991015)
We were:
Asking people to donate spare cycles to climate prediction
Talking about some Cyberprivacy prevention Act
Talking about Sun an Open source (boy we've been discussing that one for a long time haven't we)
Letting everyone know that the FCC would leave broadband alone
Talking about a major Star Wars character that was about to die in a book.
Gasping in horror when we learned that Microsoft was lobbying to cut the DOJ antitrust budget
Discussing that Debian was going to be available through retail channels, and how "newbies" would never be able to install it.
Talking about Open Source Poster Boys
Announcing two brand new Slashdot sections, Apache and BSD
Reviewing a commercial IDE for Linux (Codewarrior)
Discussing advances in nanotech
Reviewing John Carmack's answers to his questions
Drooling over IBM's huge 73 GB hard drive
Discussing a BBC interview with Bill Gates
Celebrating that there was going to be free general admission at FreeBSD Con
Talking about a review of "that half Palm III half Cell Phone mutant thing".
Wondering why there were no widescreen TV's in the US.
Announcing the Li18nux effort
Making fun of online language translation tools
Unsurprisingly, most of the links the sources of that day's stories are now 404.
I stumbled upon Slashdot many, may years ago.
I was amazed at all the quality links and informative comments.
For whatever reason, I didn't bookmark the site after I visited for the first time, then for the life of me I couldn't remember the URL.
I kept searching for "news for geeks" (which I swore was the tagline of that awesome site I stumbled upon) in Yahoo (this was before Google rose to the top of the search engines) but didn't get any good results.
After a while I somehow found Slashdot again, and had a "do'h" moment when I saw that the tagline was "News for nerds", not "News for geeks" as I remembered it.
It took me a while to actually create an account, oh, how I wish my account number was even lower.
In any case, I'm glad to have been a part of the Slashdot community for the most part of my professional life.
Thanks Slashdot, for keeping us all in the loop of the latest happenings in the technology world.
What would happen to Solaris, GlassFish, NetBeans, etc?
The NetBeans/GlassFish combo is a killer combination for developing Java EE/J2EE applications. I would hate to see those two products disappear, since they compete directly with Eclipse and Websphere from IBM.
Quite an amazing feat since Java didn't come out until 1995. When I first started working with Java (1996) there was no official Sun Java under Linux, there was a port from BlackDown (their web site seems to have gone AWOL recently).
I can't remember exactly when Sun added Linux as an officially supported platform, however I know it wasn't from the get go. As a matter of fact, the number one bug in Sun's Java Bug Parade for a long time was a petition to officially support Linux.
About a year and a half ago I bought an AMD 64 laptop. I dualboot 64bit Fedora and 32 bit XP (came preinstalled, hardly ever use it).
The only (minor) problems I've had is that there is no 64 bit version of the Java plugin, and there is no 64 version of Flash player, therefore I run a 32 bit version of Firefox with the 32 bit version of the Java plugin and Flash player.
I'm still on FC 5, which includes a 32 bit version of OpenOffice.org, runs just fine (I heard that FC 6 includes a 64 bit version of OO.o).
Funny you should say that. I migrated from Ubuntu to Fedora because Fedora supported my hardware *better* than Ubuntu.
The hardware in question is 64 bit HP ZV6000 series laptop. The included ATI XPRESS 200M video card is problematic under Linux (at least it was when I got the laptop about a year and a half ago). Ubuntu would not run X at all. Fedora worked "out of the box" (with the VESA Driver, but still...).
I own an older version of this book and it really rocks.
As usual, Amazon has it cheaper than BN ($29.69 vs $35.99).
As usual, Amazon has it cheaper than BN ($23.09 vs $27.99)
To save you the trouble, here are some screenshots
of JDK 1.6 (mustang) running on Linux under GTK. Notice how Swing
adapts to the user's desktop theme.
Here's the link to Amazon.
Yes, it's an affiliate link, flame away, what do I care.
Amazon has it about $10 cheaper than BN.
Amazon has it for $32.97 new, 22.89 new
vs $44.95 from BN
Amazon Has it cheaper than B & N. ($19.77 new, 13.12 used).
Mine was an Atari 800 as well. It was a hand me down from my uncle, when he got himself a shiny new IBM PC.
It was already becoming obsolete when I got it, nevertheless I have fond memories of it.
Amazon has it cheaper than BN ($16.47 vs $20.20).
Amazon has it cheaper than BN. ($23.07 vs $27.96)
Amazon has it for 16.47