Java for Web Developers Courseware? 35
brentlaminack asks: "I've been asked by a local college continuing education department to put together a series of professional development courses on web programming in Java. Clearly, there are lots of books out there on Java, but what would you recommend for a professional development course? The material should have good examples, meaningful exercises, (an underrated and very difficult part of putting together courses) and not be 2000 pages or $500 per copy. The material should also cover some Object Oriented architecture and design patterns. As to which web framework... I'm open to suggestions on that as well. After all the smoke clears, I'll try to summarize the responses on my journal."
Book recommendation (Score:2, Interesting)
I found it to be a good learning tool. While I have met one of the authors, I am in no way affliated with him or the book. This is just my pesonal opinion.
XML HELL (Score:1)
Re:XML HELL (Score:2)
Ummmm. No.
The only XML file you'll be touching for vanilla web development in Java is web.xml, which is the webapp deployment descriptor. And for the most part, this file is very simple to create and manage, even by hand. And any modern IDE has wizards that take care of this for you.
Now EJB development, otoh, can evolve into XML hell. But metalanguages like xdoclet make this less painful.
Kindly take your FUD elsewhere...
*sigh* (Score:2)
1. Teach them how to program and read documentation.
2. Make them catch up on the relevant RFCs.
3. Give them the servlet JavaDocs.
This idea of specialized training in programming had got to go. If they know how to program and read standards, that's all they need to know in order to grasp the entire concept.
Re:*sigh* (Score:5, Informative)
I wouldn't say that this is necessarily the way for a "continuing education" course to be taught. Fundamentals can take a year or two to teach. The submitter didn't give a whole lot of context, but I'm guessing this is perhaps a course at a community college (low cost, outsider putting materials together, etc.)
Since it must be in Java appropriate topics might include:
While we're on the subject of JSF, I should plug Facelets [java.net], which vastly simplifies the view side of things.
Your biggest concern will be having enough time for the students to get their head around whatever framework you do choose. Using Java for a small application is like sandblasting a soup cracker (to quote the bard [dilbert.com]). You could really spend a whole course on one part of the MVC.
Re:*sigh* (Score:2)
Not that simple (Score:1)
1. Teach them how to program and read documentation.
2. Make them catch up on the relevant RFCs.
3. Give them the servlet JavaDocs.
Java - like most OO environments - is much more than a programming language, besides learning best programming practices, you need to learn the 'libraries'. On top of that, lots of (open source) frameworks exist, in particular when it comes to writing web-apps. And to complicate even further, some of these frameworks can interact but overlap with their capabilities...
It's
Head First Books (Score:2)
Also, any Java professional development course should include preparation for the Java Sun Certified Programmer exam. I recommend the McGraw Hill/Osbourne Guide [amazon.com] - helped me score a 98%.
Re:Head First Books (Score:2)
O'Reilly Head First Series [oreilly.com]
Two things: (Score:3, Insightful)
2.) Whatever you end up doing -- and I know some professors that don't use a book at all, by the way -- make sure at least one of the development environments you use is entirely free (as in beer). Open source is better, but at the very least, they should be free. The last thing you want to do to them is add software licensing to the long list of expenses they'll face coming out of college. Big, expensive tools are fine, so long as they can at least cope with free products, even if the free ones are inferior.
Re:Two things: (Score:3, Interesting)
Having said that, I wonder what the target audience is for this class. EJB strikes me as massive overkill for all but a tiny handful of projects. 90% of the time (at least), I would guess that all the conceptual complexities it brings don't really provide any long-term bene
Re:Two things: (Score:1)
Web programming in Java does not necessarily mean EJB. You can use POJOs (plain old Java objects), Hibernate, Spring, or other simpler solutions. Also note that EJB3.0 is significantly simpler to use than EJB2.0. And your comment about JSPs - JSPs are about as simple as it it gets. And if it was a general web programming class, I wouldn't foist a framework o
Re:Two things: (Score:2)
What you gain from EJB's is scalabilit
Re:Two things: (Score:2)
Java offers a lot between these two scales of development. Anyone thinking of starting a project in Rails should seriously consider matters of performance, internationalisation and the ability to scale up their project later. What looks like a small Rails project now could easily grow, a
This may help (Score:3, Informative)
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Electrical-Engineering-
OCW@MIT: Software Engineering for Web Applications
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Electrical-Engineering-
Webcast@Berkeley: With real video and/or MP3 : Data Structures
http://webcast.berkeley.edu/courses/archive.php?s
Web development using XML:
http://cscie153.dce.harvard.edu/ [harvard.edu]
The way I learned (Score:3, Interesting)
Java Primer - in a real tiny nutshell (Score:2)
SafariU (Score:3, Informative)
Don't forget security (Score:3, Insightful)
Security is a must for Web developers. There is a set of typical mistakes that are frequently made in Web applications, and most of them are not fixed automagically by using Java. Fortunately plenty of resources are available on the Net:
Make sure your developers read and understand this.
Stripes: Good web framework for teaching (Score:2, Insightful)
On the plus side it:
- Has comprehensive and easy to follow documentation
- Is much simpler to grasp for new developers than Struts, JSF etc.
- Is more OO than most MVC web frameworks, without forcing a component model on you
- Doesn't require gobs
Re:Stripes: Good web framework for teaching (Score:2)
What is the point of teaching a framework that isn't widely used and is non-standard, no matter what the quality?
JSF (a JSR standard) has all the momentum behind it. There are tools for very fast development like Studio Creator. There are powerful components from many vendors, and exciting projects based on it like facelets.
What developers personally use is one thing. What they teach is another, and they have a responsibility to teach
Suggestion (Score:3, Interesting)
It goes through J2EE systematically, is clear, and has good examples.
I wouldn't introduce frameworks of any kind until you've done the basics of J2EE. Otherwise, you're introducing people to a solution before they know what the problem is.
Also, most frameworks seem to me to be not worth (a) the pain of learning them and (b) the added dependency risks. They do things which simply aren't that hard to do.
Struts is my favorite example. Visit the web site and they throw a ton of complex crap at you, without ever answering the simple question "What compelling problems does this solve?"
Re:Suggestion (Score:2)
Re:Suggestion (Score:2)
Two years ago people trying to be trendy and teach frameworks would have been teaching Struts. Then Struts 1.0 was put in maintenance mode, and Struts Ti (2.0) was to be merged with Open Symphony. Then Struts 2.0 was forgotten in favor of Shale [apache.org] and JSF.
That's the trouble with trying to be "modern" and "keep with the times"--by the time you've finished teaching the class, the stuff you were teaching is probably abandoned, deprecated or obsolete
Re:Suggestion (Score:2)
Re:Suggestion (Score:2)
And it's more like saying "Don't teach ASP.NET 1.0, because it's about to be completely replaced by ASP.NET 2.0." Except, at least ASP.NET is part of the standard, whereas Struts isn't. So it's more like saying "Don't teach WinForms using Mono"...
Re:Suggestion (Score:2)
What you don't know that you know (Score:4, Interesting)
Having just been through this with a friend of mine, who has decades of OO experience in desktop programming, beware of prerequisites that you don't realize they need:
If you get any one of these wrong, your web app is doomed to failure. These are tough concepts for some, but they aren't optional.
Great Example (Score:2)
Java Studio Creator 2.1 (Score:2)