Okay so, as some people may know if they read that other blog about what people are doing, I'll (hopefully) be starting a programming class in a few months, and that class is going to be using Java all but exclusively.
They do teach it from the ground up, but I'm thinking it would probably be good to familiarize myself with the language ahead of time, so I was wondering if anyone on here knows some good online tutorials or anything to learn Java.The IDE we'll be using in the class is called Blue Jay or something like that if it matters.
I havent heard of Blue Jay. Ive used eclipse which is decent. Java isnt too bad though, its similar to other languages you may know. Though what is different about java is you use a lot more imports. You also use a little different way of handling arguments and parameters, and the names of some functions is a little similar to VB as opposed to C++.
I found this on a site i found from google: http://www.java-examples.com/hello-world-example and this http://www.java-examples.com/java-class-exampleBlueJ is a sort of stripped-down IDE from what I hear - or at least I recall people in classes that require they use it complaining about not having certain automatic debugging things that are in Eclipse..
(Eclipse is nice because it gives suggestions and does some auto-complete things but is also very configurable)When I was learning Java, I found the official Oracle tutorials (or as they call them, 'trails') very good: http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/
I had to use jcreator in my high school classes, I tried blue jay but never made anything with it and now I've been using eclipse ever since I started CheeseMod. I've found Java to be a pretty easy language to learn even without tutorials.
We used BlueJ at my uni in my first CompSci course here, Introduction to Java Programming. It's a stripped-down Java IDE - if you have any programming experience already, you'll outgrow it quickly. They teach Eclipse here, but I've heard good things about NetBeans, too.
As Josea mentioned, the official Oracle tutorials are very handy. I'd suggest sitting down and giving them a good read - and make sure you learn by actually writing code and following through the examples!Your class is literally going to start from square one in the programming world, so familiarizing yourself with basic terms like classes, methods, and variables if you don't know these already will probably prove useful. As you read and write code, these ideas will be constantly reoccuring and you'll be able to recognize each part with ease. Most of those fundamental ideas are applicable to almost every other programming language (with a bit of finagling with the syntax, of course).The Oracle tutorials will also provide an introduction to the Object-Oriented Programming paradigm (which is the "wave of the future" or something :P). It will help you understand concepts such as abstraction and inheritance, which are all related to classes and objects… they'll give you real-world examples so that you can wrap your head around it if you're new.Thanks for all the input, I'll be sure to give those tutorials a try.
@Rob and firestormx: The only other language I'd say I have experience in is GML. Also, BlueJ is for the first semester or maybe the whole first year, but then after that they switch to netbeans.The IDE you use is irrelevant anyways. What's important is knowing the language itself (I'd even say that it's way more important to know how to compile your programs using the compiler directly instead of using an IDE, that way you learn better what's going on under the hood)