Java

Ok so in a series of events, it turns out I will be taking Java this spring instead of Objective-C! I was instantly terrified, because I had heard people talk about how complicated Java was. So instead of remaining intimidated, I decided to take the Java Basics course on team treehouse, and guess what…it’s not so scary. So far, it just looks a lot like C. That’s something my friend Zed has been telling me this whole time, is that after you become comfortable with a bunch of different languages, you realize they are all pretty similar. They all do the same stuff. I’m sure the differences between them become more glaring when the codes become more complicated, but at this point in my education, I can just focus on the similarities.

Zed’s advice to me, and now my advice to you, is to learn as many languages as you can. The most important skill to learn early on is the ability to learn new things. It’s easy to google for the exact method you want in a language (wait… this is ruby…is it .touppercase? .toupper? .upcase? gah!) and no one expects someone to have everything memorized all the time. But I know to google “to upper case ruby”, and can very quickly get the answer and move on. That’s what’s important.

Efficient googling is a great skill to develop! Never be scared to google, and start recognizing Stack Overflow as your new best friend. If you end up getting an insane error in a program, just copy and paste that long error message into google. You will be surprised. A lot of other people have gotten that same error before, and there are answers!

Going to continue learning Java today, right now I’m still using team treehouse, but I’ll probably watch some lynda.com videos later.