I don't know, would I?

 

EDUCATE ME CAERBEAR!

Well it depends dunnit, on what you want to achieve. Some things just work better as desktop applications, but then again the number of things you can do on the web is expanding all the time.

 

The main reason I suggest web-oriented development is because it's easier to get started - you have everything you need to start coding already on your computer (albeit not exactly optimal for it): you have a browser and you can create text files.

 

Furthermore, the things you make can be shared with everyone, and you can get help on stuff because your source code is readily available for people to see.

 

If it's an IDE you want, try this:
http://www.akshell.com/ide/

Yeeeaaaaah, I see what you're saying. But it's not really webstuff I'm interested in (at the moment, at least). It's more just stupid desk top apps that do stupid, pointless things and make me laugh :D

That's fine :D Like I said, some things just work better as desktop apps, without being constrained by a browser window.

 

Still, if you're gonna develop desktop stuff you'll have to ask someone else though, as I've not got any modern experience with it :$

I've learnt C# recently, if you're using Visual Studio 2010 (ask Jim, or join MS Bizspark and get it for free (dance) ) then you can literally just jump in and make something fun. x

To be honest, working out what I need to download from Sun is almost proving too hard for me already :$ :$ :$ :$ :$

I considered that too, but Java has the distant possibility of being able to write stupid, pointless things that make me laugh and RUN ON MY TELEPHONE!! :O

I dare you to try downloading the Oracle database client. And actually get it working.

 

Don't feel stupid for getting confused by the Sun website. It'd bloody awful.

Hee, I agree with that being exciting. Maybe, even though you're not considering web stuff, have a look at Javascript and jQuery and ajax.etc - you'd need to have a web-design-head on to to make interfaces - but they'd run on most phones.

I'm just concerned because well, I don't think many people use (or at least, decide to start learning) Java anymore and if you're going to learn something it may aswell be something that's popular currently (I'm not really saying this for career advice, but for finding support and asking for help).

Eclipse is good, Java is shit.



Definitely don't pick Java.

Something like Scala or Groovy may be a better choice - both runs on the JVM and compile down to Java bytecode, but they (attempt to) hide all the horrible ugly bits of Java, so you can get on with writing code instead of screaming because after jumping through dozens of hoops it's still not doing what you want.

(I've not actually tried Scala or Groovy myself yet, and they might both be shit, but I've heard plenty of people say good things about each of them.)

Oh, and if you're serious about Android stuff, Scala is probably the better of the two.
(Search for "scala android" and you get details of people doing</e> it, whilst "groovy android" is more people asking how to get it working.)

I don't like Java as a language at all, it's really annoying, and I avoid it where possible.

But I'm pretty sure this is nonsense:

It's the sort of thing lots of people say about technologies that aren't mentioned regularly, or they simply don't have much exposure to, and thus assume are withering away.

Java is huge, and even if Oracle wanted to kill it off I'm not sure they could (there's too many companies like IBM, Google, RedHat, Apache, etc who are all heavily invested in it).

And certainly, if he is crazy enough to pick it, he'll have no less trouble finding help with Java than he will with C# or JavaScript or anything else.

You reckon? I know it's still widely used, but I just doubt they'd be the same sort of support online as there is for C#. There are twice as many results on Google for "C# programming" than "Java programming".

That may too be nonsense, I dislike using numbers of search results to back up an argument :D , but I still don't think there's the same number of resources.

Right, that's that settled then. You disapprove of Java, therefore Java must be good.

(giggle)

Here's some pretty lines, apparently showing job market:



Even with a grain of salt, that's a significant size, and it's rising.

(oops, that was supposed to go to you.)

How dare you post things at me that are meant for Steve? :@

I know there's a massive career market for Java programmers (I know a few, they are all awful people. "Hello :-B I have a certificate from Oracle :-B "), but if you're a professional programmer working in an office surrounded by other programmers (which your chart is counting) you are quite likely going to ask them your questions before turning to The Internets.

My point all along, as I said in my first post to Kos, was that I don't think there's going to be anything near as large a "community" of amateur programmers online as there would be for a language like C# or PHP.

When I'm teaching myself a new language it's resources like that I really rely on. The fact that some other un-educated buffoon has had the same problem as me, posted to a forum about it and had the solution given to them.

You know those silly legal documents where every little detail must be explicitly spelt out and every term precisely defined.

That's what I find Java like. Far too rigid and ceremonial.

It's a bit like the difference between HTML and XHTML...

<!doctype html><html lang="en">
 
<TITLE>Hello!</TITLE>
 
<p>Wooohoo!!!
<p>I <3 lemons.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> 
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> 
<html lang="en" xml:lang="en" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> 
<head>
	<title>Hello!</title>
</head>
<body>
	<p>Wooohoo!!!</p>
	<p>I &lt;3 lemons.</p>
</body>
</html>

Those result in the same thing.

If you think the second one over the top, you'll find Java a nightmare. :P

http://stackoverflow.com/tags

It's the second most popular language on a heavily .NET-oriented website.

And working out unanswered against total questions, he's more likely to get a Java question answered than a PHP or Javascript one. (87.0 vs 86.9 vs 85.1)