Frustrated newbies - From zero to Ace Developer - How ?

You begin with hello world. Then a few toy examples using command line and notepad. You feel you know something.

Try mimicking a real developers job by making your own project - be shocked by the information overload -
IDE, classpath, importing jars, new APIs etc...all at once.

How [edited] does someone even become a developer ?
The logic, code and theoretical concepts are the easy part. The tools like eclipse, poorly documented and poorly explained API's,
lack of textbooks for such things...How does one even get off the ground ?

You learn by doing and by experience. Its a continuous and incremental process. There's lot in every technology you start with. One shouldn't get overwhelmed by the features provided or the power of any language.

Mohamed Sanaulla wrote:You learn by doing and by experience. Its a continuous and incremental process. There's lot in every technology you start with. One shouldn't get overwhelmed by the features provided or the power of any language.

Soothing words, but hardly any relief. Right now, i am taking serious damage -
Google analytics and java api

And to top it all, there is no decent beginner level book for learning eclipse inside out. Most of the existing books are pre-2005.
How does one read about eclipse then ? I don't want to spend my time doing random toy projects with eclipse and then learning tid-bits of tips and tricks about eclipse along the way.
I want the whole deal- something like a "head first" book. Only that style of book can do justice to such an important tool.

Searching "eclipse java" on Amazon tells me there are some books on Eclipse. There are also examples in many books on a topic. For example, the book we are promoting this week "Java 7 JAX-WS Web Service" goes into a ton of detail about how to use NetBeans. I realize that doesn't help you, but some books do that for Eclipse.

As far as info overload, you learn slowly. By coming across things. By reading. By trying. By participating in forums online

.

Jeanne Boyarsky wrote:Searching "eclipse java" on Amazon tells me there are some books on Eclipse. There are also examples in many books on a topic. For example, the book we are promoting this week "Java 7 JAX-WS Web Service" goes into a ton of detail about how to use NetBeans. I realize that doesn't help you, but some books do that for Eclipse.

As far as info overload, you learn slowly. By coming across things. By reading. By trying. By participating in forums online .

Amazon books too old - pre 2005

I swear if I become good at eclipse i will make all the authors look like a bunch of dumbasses by writing a way better book than them - lars vogel excluded from this list though.

Arnold Strong wrote:How does one read about eclipse then ? I don't want to spend my time doing random toy projects with eclipse and then learning tid-bits of tips and tricks about eclipse along the way.

Then don't do toy projects; do a real one. I've been doing real projects on Eclipse for almost a decade and continuously learning along the way.

I suspect that your motivation to make the authors of the old books look bad will evaporate once you learn how little money you are likely to make relative to the effort; at which point you will discover why so few books have been written on the subject recently.

Cheers!

Luke

Luke Kolin wrote:Then don't do toy projects; do a real one. I've been doing real projects on Eclipse for almost a decade and continuously learning along the way.

Absolutely. Pick something which you want to do, something which interests you. Then start on an implementation. You'll learn as you go along just by doing it, but do continue to learn from other sources at the same time.

However let me warn you: once you have your real project finished, it's going to be rubbish. (At least that's what I found with my projects, that's just the nature of learning as you go along.) And since you're now an Ace Developer, you will realize that and want to rewrite it. And you should go ahead and do that, as part of the learning process.

Nothing is achieved overnight. Practice, practice and more practice is the only way to learn something I'm afraid.

You can go on courses and even study for a certification exam but those alone won't make you an ace developer.

I liken coding and learning tools to driving a car. When you pass your test, you still don't know how to drive. That comes through years of driving on different roads i.e. experience.

There are so many good blogs and sites out there that takes you through using different tools. It is always good to have mentors whom you can approach for a quick tip. With some experience, practice, and lots of Googling, things will fall into place. I went through same emotions as you.

Another tip is that, start your own blog to capture your experience. As you said, there are so much to learn and blogging your experience will be useful to you and others.

Take the frustation off the table.
Developers deal with machines and technology, who do not understand emotions

Start learning, try to get relevant work.

Arnold Strong wrote:Soothing words, but hardly any relief. Right now, i am taking serious damage -
Google analytics and java api

Check my latest reply to your other "fustrated eclipse" post question and see if it helps.
Also would be helpful for you to try ths magical remedy ( Ranchers call it EaseUp )

Giving up on the useless google API. I am doing Spring !
See you guys !

Arnold Strong wrote:Giving up on the useless google API. I am doing Spring !
See you guys !

Well, this is definitely one of the benefits of being in a learning environment.... On a real project, you seldom can just dump a technology for another one.

Henry

Arnold Strong wrote:there is no decent beginner level book for learning eclipse inside out

Why do you want to learn Eclipse in and out? Have you consider a possibility that at some point of time, you might land in a team where everybody's using altogether different IDE (NetBeans, IntelliJ or JEdit)?

My point is - IDE is simply a tool - which can be understood at a descent level simply by using it. I'm using Eclipse for more than 5 years and all I know is how to create a project, how to build a project, how to provide classpath, command line arguments, JVM arguments, and how to debug the code. That's it. And I've not faced any issue yet.

If you are developing plug-ins for Eclipse, then that is a different story, but otherwise, I don't think taking pains of going through a book is really necessary - as far as IDE is concerned. Generally, a need-to-know approach works quite well.

I hope this helps.