Shadow Wrought's Journal: Outthunk by Thinking in Java

My plan was pretty straightforward at the time, and it had been working fairly well. Most introductory programming texts teach you the syntax, have you practice some code, you build on it, and then gradually expand until you are (semi)competent. What I would run into though is that part way in I' hit a wall. Why the syntax was making the computer do something stopped making sense. Once it stopped making sense I couldn't apply the knowledge, and then my learnings broke down.

So this time I decided to read TiJ first, so I would already know why the language was doing what it was doing. That way when I sat down to learn the syntax It would make sense, having already been built in. And, to a certain extant it worked. Loops make a lot more sense now than they used to. But... (you knew there'd be a but;-)

I'm halfway through the chapter on Polymorphism and it has just gone too esoteric for me. I can't follow what's going on in the code anymore, so I'm calling that part off. This should be one of the last dedicated weekends to "house stuff" so, in theory, I should be able to commit an hour a night to learning the syntax. My hope is that when I begin digesting the syntax next week, with this framework already in mind, that the two methods will balance each other and the lessons will make more sense. It'd sure be nice;-)

I might be off on this, but it seems that C++ is a language geared more towards single coders creating a master program to do what's required, whereas Java is geared more towards groups of programmers linking different chunks of code together to deal with issues as they arise.

Learn OOD, then polymorphism will make more sense

[RailGunner]

I'm halfway through the chapter on Polymorphism and it has just gone too esoteric for me.

Yeah, you really have to have a conceptual understanding of Object Oriented Design to know why you'd want to use polymorphism. And the benefits of OOD and OOP are not something that can be contained in a single post.

I might be off on this, but it seems that C++ is a language geared more towards single coders creating a master program to do what's required, whereas Java is geared more towards groups of programmers

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[Shadow Wrought]

I am very much hoping that the "clicks" happen when I sit down and learnt he syntax as a beginner. I already had a click in the loop section which connected back to one of the walls I hit with Python.

I guess the difference between C++ and Java would that it seems like C++ has been adapted for that environment, whereas Java is designed for it. Not a dig one way or the other so much as an observation.

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[FortKnox]

Polymorphism is PART of OOP, so its not like 'learn ood, then you can try to learn polymorphism'. The key is to understand inheritence (why does Java use the word 'extends' when we talk inheritence?). Then understand upcasting (if a TV 'is-a' box, we can treat it like a box, right?). Once you have those two nailed down, I can explain polymorphism pretty simply...

Re:Learn OOD, then polymorphism will make more sen

[Iamthefallen]

Yeah, you really have to have a conceptual understanding of Object Oriented Design to know why you'd want to use polymorphism. And the benefits of OOD and OOP are not something that can be contained in a single post.

Another way to look at is is to go as far as you can, but when you hit a wall and find yourself saying "This is stupid. there's gotta be a better way to do it." Then ask what a better way is.

Then you can see both the problem, and how an OOP technique can solve it.

Until you have encountered the

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[Shadow Wrought]

That is a good way of thinking about it. BY the time I'm fighting the wall, in theory, I should know what I'm doing with everything that has been going on before the wall.

Although I must say that "fuzzy abstract" remended me of cleaning out the fridge last night...

programming

[The Fun Guy]

I realize that admitting this on Slashdot is tantamount to asking for a beating, but programming of any sort just makes my head hurt.

I tried to learn Perl, got just barely up to "Hello World"... and then got lost.

I installed Red Hat not just once, but three separate times, training wheels firmly in place each time... and then couldn't think of anything to do with it.

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[Shadow Wrought]

It has made my head hurt, too, but in a good way. My creativity seems to operate like a half-crazed badger with ADD - it randomly attacks, latches onto the idea's arse, and won't let go until anothe idea comes along. I didn't get the reply submitted to your JE yesterday, but my collection of ideas is now up to 12 pages, with each idea being, on average, a paragraph description. In fact, when I wrote the SeptaKwansaba I looked through the ideas until I found one that I thought would fit the format. But I

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[Kymermosst]

Ah, but once it clicks, it's great, especially when you can spend some time writing a program that makes your life easier.

I'm a systems administrator at a large software company. I've recently been given the responsibility to maintain our Solaris Jumpstart infrastructure. Jumpstart is Sun's name for their automated network-based OS installation process. One thing that's required is to develop profiles that have a complete set of software packages that do not miss any dependencies and support the required

Polymorphism

[TechnoLust]

You really need to understand interfaces and inheritance before this makes sense. Basically you are writing something that will accept many things, and you might not even know what you will be sending it, so you want it to be able to figure out what you sent it, and have it respond accordingly. So if you invoke the speak() method, you want it to say "Meow" if it's a cat and "Woof" if it's a dog. It's hard to think of instances where you'd need to use it, but you know them when you see them. Wow... this

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[account_deleted]

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