I am trying to learn Sun Microsystems’ s Java programming language a little bit, as well as a little JavaScript.

This page is about some of the simple demonstration programming projects I plan to be doing to help myself learn these languages. I have found that learning Java is hard but interesting. I don’t know C++ at all. Knowing it can be a step toward knowing Java. Oh well! (Well, I know a little C, and that is helping.)

Here is the first one: Hello9 dated June 29, 1999. This applet has some serious problems that were pointed out to me (see below).

Here is the second one: Hello10 dated November 27, 1999. This is an updated version of Hello9 that catches a number of forms of errors caused by the user entering various kinds of improper strings in the text box and hitting the Enter button.

Here is the third one: Hello11 dated about November 29, 1999. This is a slightly updated version of Hello10 that fixes something that I considered an unjust form of user correction. It is a very minor update. But the injustice was irking me. Hehe.

Note: I have not been doing much with Java for quite a while. I am now spending some time and some of my attention on it again. I realize that I need a good "learning Java" book, because the free online texts and my O’Reilly desktop reference are not helping enough.---November 27, 1999

Note: I have written a few ultra-dumb console applications as practice, too. But the Hello9 series is a little more fun to share. And you can see how it has improved on the original concept. --- December 4, 1999

Here is another version:  Hello13. This one adds a background color and inproves the interface slightly.

Here is another version. I  used the Java 1.1 event model--something that baffled me until recently--this time. HelloNewEvent. ---May 28, 2000<

Here is one of the ultra-dumb "applications" (GUI3.zip) I have written. It requires the Java 1.2 Runtime. Unzip the zip file, and run GUI3.bat. It doesn’t do much.  ---June 18, 2000

Here is an applet that is almost a version of the GUI3 micro-application. Since no one would ever download and install GUI3 (I imagine anyway), I decided to make it into an applet that is only a mouse click away.   ---June 20, 2000

It’s a very weird coincidence, but I’m editing my web site today, and it just happens to be exactly one year since my last entry on this page. Since it has been such a long time, this will be really a big one!

Last Fall (2000), I managed to read a book on C (that’s actually the title, btw: "A Book On C"). It’s often very hard to read anything (it doesn’t even need to be technical) because my SCHIZOPHRENIA causes a lot of problems, at times, including very poor concentration and an inability to think "mathematically.’ I thought I knew C from a long time ago, but reading the book this time, I realized how little I really knew. I had tried to read this same book a year earlier, but it was a complete failure.

It was late in fall of 1999, that I read "JavaScript for Dummies" which allowed me do the rollover navigation bars currently on this site, as well as the Multisearch Page (http://search.vicinage.me) on this site. I made another page with JavaScript (JavaScript has nothing at all to do with the language Java, btw) which you can play with if you’d like. Last fall (2000), I bought a copy of the newer edition of Bruce Eckel’s "Thinking in C++", and I read about 3 chapters before I decided to put it down and read his other book, "Thinking in Java" (the older edition), which I had out from the library. I only made it through the first third of that one.

This spring I read a book on relational database design followed by  a tutorial book on M$ Access (Microsoft’s desktop database program). After that I was really happy when I was able to make a small relational database for my cassette tape album collection, something I had wanted to do for a number of years and failed to be able to do twice before. The reason it never happened in the past was that I really didn’t know what a relational database was or how to build one. I was really proud of myself, and the database is very useful to me, too.

Next, I read a book on Access 97 VBA (VBA is an embedded form of M$’s Visual Basic) and was able to make a couple of little databases enhanced with VB code. It was very frustrating, because I couldn’t find anyone online who could help me with Access-specific VB issues. Next...(you can tell I’ve been having good luck with the sz)...I read a book on VB 6.  I didn’t make anything software-wise after I read that one and put VB on the shelf for a while. These last two were Wrox Press "Beginning..." series  library books.

Now, I’m finishing the last chapter of that same Eckel C++ book I started and then abandoned last fall. I have not done any coding while I read the book. In fact, I have not written any C++ code ever...well, excepting one tiny thing. I cannot believe how huge and complicated Standard C++ is. It is so huge that Eckel had to split this edition of the book into two *big* volumes. I know for sure I will have to read this book over again, probably quite closely the next time, too. Next time I will do the exercises. I think the book is great. I love how he tells you the reasons WHY the language is the way it is so you can be "Thinking..." in it while you code, which has implications for the efficiency and maintainability of your code. I imagine you can be a lot more elegant, too.

You are probably saying to yourself now, "I thought this was the *Java* project page!" Yeah, you are right, but since I started on this road around June of 1999, I have realized that you get a great perspective when you jump from area to area with this computer stuff. (Besides, I don’t have much to report on the Java front right now.) I’m starting to get a big picture, even if I can’t code my way out of a wet paper bag, still! 

In Fall of 1999, I took a community college "intro to networking" course, which was not of high quality, but I still learned quite a bit. I didn’t manage to take any M$ Windows NT 4 MCSE tests before they were retired last December, but I made a cheap old computer into a firewall/broadband router using Linux this Spring. It took me four weeks to be able to read all of a very, very small set of Linux Router Project docs, but eventually I did it.!

I think I am going to try to read a Wrox book on object-oriented design next. The book uses C++ for all the examples, which is why I have forced myself to keep trying to read the Eckel C++ book, these last two months. I also appreciate the Java language a lot more now, having seen C++ in detail. Two years ago, I asked someone what OOP actually was and got no answer, but I know what it is now (roughly), even though I still can’t really do it. And I found the answers on my own. I’ll probably be slogging and slogging through more books in the next many months, but it is interesting enough to make the persistence worthwhile and enjoyable. Maybe I’ll never be a programmer, but even if that is how things turn out, I think I won’t regret this adventure.    ---June 20, 2001

|THE END|