@Fdeveloper, u r indeed right. i might seem to be selling 9ja short, but I am only recounting "the experiences I have had". You are somewhere else, like sbu where things are better and operate in the normal way. some of us are just "here".

most symbian apps are written using C++, some VB, and as I am sitting in my chair today, i still prefer symbian native apps to java apps on my phone. i have a java app (first aid - display a text of first aid tips) and some java games - incredibles, highway 3d, chips challenge) I have about 20+ other apps and they are not java, simply because as a consumer i feel more comfortable with the non java apps. the java apps are cool, dont get me wrong. its just my taste.

@sbu, u work in d work, earning pounds or whatever, do u know what it means to work on your own in Nigeria? some places in 9ja. no bad mouthing. thats not the topic. i still dont want to leave. but here where i work, usually 1 person has to handle every aspect of a project. urs may be better, i am telling you mine.

an experience, a client (director general of budget of one of our states) called on friday morning requesting for a budget process management solutions (web based) to be delivered on monday, and he specifically did not want an off the shelf solution because they are too expensive and do not understand their own "specific" workings. i got there on monday truly with functionality, all he complained about was the interface. thats how a lot of clients are in nigeria, maybe elsewhere.

this same man is used to quickbooks, but for one limitation (quickbookx can only take a maximum of 99,999,999:99) which will not work well for ministries considering our poor money value. to him, any application that has better functionality must look as fine as quickbooks. of course, functionality must be present, but interface is very important.

java is just to hard to learn, and i dont have time to take extra classes. i think i'll focus on inter-platform web solutions

I need to add my own 2 cents to this topic, without repeating prvs arguments
With refence to the "Java is too difficult" phrase.......Depends on your reference material, text & online information. Have to agree that some guides can alienate newbies, but I beg you to check this link & view sample chapters of "Head First Java" http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/hfjava2/
Its an excellent book written in a way that even a 7 year old can pick up programming skills with eases ( well, my nephew seems to agree with this)

There are loads of IDE tools to enable graphical programming ( JBuilder, JCreator Sun One studio etc) but I don't even bother with them anymore, just write my code in notepad & compile it entirely in Windows command prompt..really that easy like writing raw HTML instead of using dreamweaver - Have a look at this web page for an example http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/uiswing/learn/example2.html

I'd recommend Java for budding programmers as it focuses entirely on methods, classes, variables, etc instead of shielding code behind an IDE that does half of the work, leaving you in the dark when things go wrong

VB.studio IDEs offer advantages in the sense that you can drag & drop widgets onto the screen,then go in & write the code. This was how I started off in VB & Visual C++; By focusing on the code b4 the interface is designed ensures I don't have to wade through lines of code tracking errors ( Xtreme programming approach)
Yep, I've used VB & C++, not gonna rate Java above any program as each has its strengths & weaknesses ( VB : easy to knock out programs - C++ most powerful tool & fastest code but one needs to know what they're doing, no memory management whatsoever; Java - gets criticised by people unfamiliar with it, a great educational, development & deployment tool, garbage collection, Jini, Struts, Jakarta, Swing, RMI, CORBA, JDBC)

africanboy, i dont really want to sound rude but ur comment on the "death" of java is a misplaced on, let's try to educate ouselves on some issues instead of being sentimental, 4 ur information JAVA is alive and well. Look beyond d java u know, read wide, look into devices, look all around u, Java is beyond d simple application programming u know, WAKE UP

@africanboy, I take your point about the Symbian stuff and for the record, I live and work in Nigeria, in Lagos to be precise.

Omo Eko ni mi

@F, aight, where u at? Could probably hook up wit u and learn. Maybe java, maybe not!

@sbu, would you mind posting me a CD containing all these tools. i use dial-up and downloading is a horror

Hi Y'all,
I am a Java newbie but since I dont have that much access to a pc to allow me to do my studying on a pc (via cd's or pdf's), I'm searching for Java books. Someone (mimoh_mi) I met here on nairaland recommended Headfirst Java by o'reilly but I

Hi Y'all,

I am a Java newbie but since I dont have that much access to a pc to allow me to do my studying on a pc (via cd's or pdf's) so I have to do my studying from Books, which I kinda like. I'm searching for Java books. Someone (mimoh_mi) I met here on nairaland recommended Headfirst Java by o'reilly but I can't seem to find this bnook in Lagos, Nigeria where I stay. I tried checking Francis Van-Lare (Ikeja) and CSS (CMS) but no results. Does anyone know where I can get it or does anyone have a copy I can photocopy or recommend any other good material for me.

Cheers

Thanks sbucareer,

But it might be a little difficulty buying it from abroad- costs of freight, credit card etc. Thats why I asked if anyone knew where it was available in Nigeria.

Thanks

What an interesting topic, I read the whole thread to the end. I really must say I learnt alot of everyone input, I will share the little that I know about software development and engineering.

I just started programming about a year ago, mostly web programming and client-server applications. I started off with HTML, XHTML, javascript and recently moved into PHP, PHP is wonderful, don't ask me why I didn't use ASP, ASPX, JSP or coldfusion. In january, we started java in school - I will tell all of you this, Java is the BOMB!.

If you truly understand the OOP concept, you won't have issues with java, although you have to read and get to know most of it's classes but the effort is worth it. I coded my first application in Java on a windows system using notepad and I ran exact on my iBook G4, it gave me the same result - I tested it on my Fedora 3 server and it produced the same result. No other programming language can take this feature from java - it is platform independent.

For everyone using Microsh*t, my advice to you is this - opensource is the fututre. Java may lag behind in speed but it is not noticable but sbucareer, php scripts are faster than jsp scripts anyday - that I will tell you.

In summary - Java is the future, .NET is not bad but if we don't have over $600 to buy a microsoft server then what happens? or if I want to run my apps I build using .NET on MAC what happens?

sbucareer - I really haven't dived into java, I am just doing that but I was part of the team that built an sms application using php that talks to a java sms gateway. I am talking about over 300,000 subscribers accessing one mysql database, not at the same time though. It was first coded in jsp but I man - they had issues perhaps the coders didn't develop the app well but it was dead slow running on an MAC X server with 2 dual processors.

We converted the app to php and boy did it rock. I was called in to handle the mysql backend and debug certain aspects of the app but we finished the program in no time. I am not saying that php is better than java, no way. I am telling you that for web apps, using php or jsp with the same server software - php will beat jsp in terms of speed.

Thanks for the applet. I reckon you have alot of experience in java, I would appreciate if you coould mentor me. I want to code in java pretty well, so far - I'm loving it.

int d = 9 > 1 ? 3 : 8;

This will be much faster you have cut off two assignment operators for one. Unless of course somehwere else in your code you've overloaded = operator to do something else :-p

nope. there'll only be one assignment operation anyway. i think they both have the same speed.

Hi ,
Haven't been here for sometimes now. Well for those anti java people, you might be right in your own way.
But for me, with almost about 5 years java experience ( active 2 year now), i will tell you that java is still
a language for the future. The problems with us in this part of the world is that we don't get a nice place to learn
such a simple but yet powerful language.
Also, you should have it at the back of your mind that java just marked 10 years last year. For the portability,
you can't take it away from java. Personally, i run my java applications on both windows and Linux, without touching the
codes. In fact, if you have been following the growth, you will notice great changes with each new version. Year before
last, Tiger (5.0) came out with a buster, and now Mustang (6.0) is comming soon.
To mention few area that java is hitting fast, JSP,Servlet,JDBC, J2ME and developing middleware application
for distributed application(J2EE). Like the new JavaEE 5 just out offers some killing features.
All said and done. If you want to learn java, just log on to www.javaranch.com it's free.
Any other problem just post a thread here, will be watching out.

Hi ,
   Haven't been here for sometimes now. Well for those anti java people, you might be right in your own way.
But for me, with almost about 5 years java experience ( active 2 year now), i will tell you  that java is still
a language for the future. The problems with us in this part of the world is that we don't get a nice place to learn
such a simple but yet powerful language.

Word, Bro!

All said and done. If you want to learn java, just log on to www.javaranch.com it's free.
Any other problem just post a thread here, will be watching out.

Thanks for the Link, checking it out

int d = 9 > 1 ? 3 : 8;

This will be much faster you have cut off two assignment operators for one. Unless of course somehwere else in your code you've overloaded = operator to do something else :-p

This’s a classical example of obfuscated coding.

Ok africanboy, if speed seem to be a minus for java. Let's do a speed test. After installing the J2SE 5.0 (jdk), we are not testing
the 6.0 version(Beta) mind you. ok CD to C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6.0\demo\jfc\Java2D. In this folder you will see a file named
Java2Demo.jar. It's a demo program, won't tell you the content until you have done the speed test. run the file with this command.

To run just follow this steps.

1. go to dos prompt.
2. CD C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6.0\demo\jfc\Java2D
3. type this line to run it.

java -Dsun.java2d.opengl=true -jar Java2D.jar

4. then a second command.

java -jar Java2Demo.jar

Then for codings look at these short examples.

Old ways --- 1.4


ArrayList<Integer> list = new ArrayList<Integer>();
for (Iterator i = list.iterator(); i.hasNext() {
Integer value=(Integer)i.next();
}


New ways --- 5.0

ArrayList<Integer> list = new ArrayList<Integer>();
for (Integer i : list) { , }


Expecting you comments.

looking at the code, java seems easy to understand, a little bit (using my knowledge of C), but my problem is getting the jdk, is it just me or is the website scaring me with over 100mb download. I am on dial-up @ the office no connection at home. even with a download manager, other workers and my other jobs suffers the heavy processing. sbu who is d guy u sent d CD and let me burn a copy.

after i must have written a couple of codes, then i will give feedback. also, i will try an produce the same code in VB & VB.NET without using the IDE once I get this code running.

who is skima?

sbucareer, am working on new features of 5.0. Hope to make the post after my exams. The Generic stuff is to checked if a
parameter or an object passes IS-A test at compile time rather that at runtime, by specifying a type element as a parameter
in the class definition. To force a generic method, pass the type parameter as an argument. So doing, the rest is for the
compiler to ensure that only objects that passed IS-A test is allowed as parameter to the constructor or methods.
As of 5.0, Collection classes were made generic. eg

To declare a generic class

public class Bus<E>{
List lagos = new ArrayList<E>(); // ArrayList to hold on bus objects, lagos can only contain objects that IS-A Bus

public void addMolue(E molue) { // can only pass IS-A bus arguments
lagos.add(molue); // can only add IS-A Bus to lagos
}

To implement inheritance with generic classes, follow the normal java rules. eg

public class Vehicle<E extends Bus>{} // Vehicle can only contain IS-A Bus objects


More on it next week. Have a lovely weekend. Tomorrow is my D-Day.

actually i don't think java is a very difficult language, as sbucareermentioned, try to rewrite that line of code in C/C++ actually i'm still more or less just learning both languages and am more familiar with C++ however i think making headway in java is easier; also, yes c/c++ used to be noticeably faster than java but i've heard that java's catching up.