Hey All,
While I'm not new to either programming or forums, I am new to
Java and the concept of nitpicking. I just wanted to make a couple of comments.
I am in front of a computer 12 to 16 hours per day. I love every minute of it. During the day, I run a company's QA/reliability
test lab. I took on programming responsibilities early in my career, here (my A.S. degree is in electronics). I have kept the data aquisition software running and have made improvements here and there. These programs talk to electronic meters, stepper motors and pc's and are written in Visual Basic 3.0. The hardware and software is now obsolete so I want to re-write everything in Java.
I have never taken a formal programming course so nitpicking will hopefully help me to create better habits as I trudge along in the cattle drive. I have good, logical, trouble-shooting skills which help me both at my main job and my second job as a computer repair technician. But if I had to pick one characteristic that makes me "better" than my peers, it would be "stick-to-it-iveness". I can focus on one problem for hours (sometimes days) until I see something that I didn't see the first 100 times I looked at it.
The satisfaction that you get from figuring something out that, at first seems impossible, is priceless. Whether it's the "Blue Screen Of Death", a missing curly brace, or a loose wire, you can bet that others have figured it out and you can too, if you don't give up.
Finding the cattle drive was
alot like finding the cause of BSOD or a random code bug, in that, had I not looked just a little deeper into the Head First Java book that one day, I never would have known Javaranch existed. I know what I now know because of many failed attempts. Sometimes I'm dense and other times I'm briliant. Either way, as long as I'm learning, I'm content.
...driving from coast to coast at night when you can only see 200 feet in front of you sounds impossible, but if you just keep moving, eventually you'll get there.
So, I hope this helps shed some light on your journey. Get busy!
john