Finally started reading today, because I am a horrible
procrastinator. I skimmed through most the introduction and went to the
perquisites section, where it told me that I “need to know your way around at
least one operating system, such as Windows or Mac OS X. In particular, you
need to know how to create and delete files on your computer” (Bryant
Introduction)
…Please tell me it’s not going to treat me like an idiot
through the whole book.
It teaches me how to make my first program. I kind of
already knew how to do most of it, so I’ll just show you a picture of what happened.
 |
| Hello world, the classic beginner program |
That little box at the bottom saying Hello World! is the output
of the program, by the way. I’m not very inventive, so get used to these
pictures.
For me all of this made sense except for the public static void
main(String[] args) { part, but the book assures me
that all I really need to know about that is that it’s how you start the class
(Bryant Creating the Program). It proceeds to go on for a couple paragraphs
about more things that I already knew. In retrospect, maybe I should have
skipped to chapter two. Oh well.
A bit more reading, and the chapter’s done. I was hoping for
a bit more, honestly.
“Many of these tasks constitute the day-to-day work of
full-time software developers. We spend a lot of time (more than we'd like,
usually) setting up tools” (Bryant Chapter 1 Summary). Well, I’m never going to
be a programmer at this rate. I get bored far too fast to be doing simple tasks
as 90% of my work. I’d end up spending most of my day programming easter eggs
into older programs instead of working.
Oh wait, he has more to say on that subject! “I hope you
find it [basic tasks] to be fun. I usually do” (Bryant Chapter 1 Summary).
…You monster.
Oh, and apparently I need a thought-provoking question. I assure you, dear reader, that this won't be fun for either of us.
I suppose today's question is this: Would you prefer a job that is easy but repetitive, or a job that is challenging but with plenty of variety?
Oh, and apparently I need a thought-provoking question. I assure you, dear reader, that this won't be fun for either of us.
I suppose today's question is this: Would you prefer a job that is easy but repetitive, or a job that is challenging but with plenty of variety?
Hello Aaron,
ReplyDeleteMy answer to your question at the end of this blog is that I would choose a job that is challenging but with plenty of variety. The career that I want to be in is Computer Science. It'll be challenging, but the different types of jobs in this field are interesting.
I'm currently taking Intro to Java Programming and if I remember clearly (I could be wrong so please correct me if I am) public means it can be viewed by anyone (opposite of private), static means that it'll run once (not like a loop), void means that it'll return nothing, and main means that it's the main method.
Hello World was also my first program and I would recommend changing the settings in Eclipse so that it'll automatically align your brackets for you. This is because it's easy to make the error of having one bracket ( { ), but not completing it with another ( } ). It's really annoying when this happens.
- Tiffany Ngo
Hello! I didn't realize anyone would actually find this interesting enough to comment, which is why this reply is so late. In fact, I was hoping I'd be boring enough I'd never have to reply, but I guess I screwed that one up.
DeleteYour description of what the beginning sounds right to me, but I haven't actually looked at the description in a while. I'm more the kind of person that remembers how things are done and not why.
I'd probably also go for the job with more variety. Right now I'm on the Kentridge Robotics Team, and last year I started doing programming, before deciding I didn't have time to learn it and I then proceeded to end up doing almost every other job, so I've gotten used to doing various things and learning on the spot. I may have no life for six weeks due to the amount of work involved, but it's totally worth it.
Have fun in that Java class! Maybe I'll actually remember to post an update to this blog sometime soon.