On Mon, Feb 21, 2005 at 09:58:21PM -0500, Kwan Lowe wrote:
> Paddy wrote:
> >Does anyone on this list tutor Java? I have a 16 year old son who
> >writes code in Basic and C but was forced to take Java in school. He is
> >having trouble understanding the teacher and after meeting him (the
> >teacher) so am I.
> >
> >I want to give my son the opportunity to learn the damn language even
> >though I see no useful purpose for it.
Er, Java is actually _very_ useful. It's in widespread use around the
world because it's relatively easy to rapidly prototype nice-looking and
functional applications with it.
That said, I'm not a Java fan, and I don't code in it. If you have an
understanding of C++, it's probably a short walk to Java. If your son
only knows C, then he'd have to master a some OO concepts to understand
Java. Syntax of Java is relatively C/C++ like.
>
> Hey Paddy:
> I can appreciate your frustration at being asked to learn seemingly
> useless languages. I felt that way about Pascal in high school. To this
> day I've never been asked to write any real code in Pascal... However,
Pascal was my second language (Dartmouth BASIC was first). I coded quite
a bit of useful stuff in it (personally useful). However, I realized
that it had little or no commercial future, and taught myself C. Good
choice. I'm not sure I could even understand Pascal anymore; it's been
over 20 years since I touched it.
> Java is in use at my company (more than 10,000 employees) and it is
> considered our web standard. As for tutoring, Sun has a CDROM based
> introduction to Java. There are also some good Java books (Schildt).
Caveat on Schildt. On usenet, Schildt has a bad name with regard to C
books. His works apparently contain numerous inaccuracies and incorrect
statements. This from people who know much more about C than I do. But I
have seen this in some of his books. Fortunately or unfortunately, he's
about the most prolific writer on C/C++.
Paul
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