How did you learn?

[Gregg Bolinger]

I am curious as to how/where everyone learned JAVA? So far, I have confined myself to books, the web, and this forum for learning. The university in my city has a class, but in looking at the curiculame (sp?) I could probably teach the class. Sadly that is not a praise to myself, but an insault to the class.
So if anyone cares to share any information with me, please do.
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Happy Coding,
Gregg Bolinger

[Jim Bertorelli]

Sun's Java Tutorial

[Dave Vick]

Tried the 'Teach yourself Java in 21 days book' several years ago (about 4 or 5). It was my first programming book since high school which was back in 84. Needless to say it didn't go well. Then took a class in college last spring and used quite few other books to prep for the exam.
The class definately helped establish a good knowledge base so that I an read more books on my own.
Dave

[Paul Stevens]

Had classes provided by employer.

[Cindy Glass]

Yeah - I had those same classes. Of course they took so long to get into that I was certified before I got into the second class . Mostly read a lot of books, and did alot of practice stuff. Then I FINALLY got assigned to a project in Java and got some experience. Not nearly enough yet though.
I have hopes of getting onto a new project sometime after the first of the year - so cross your fingers for me.

[Gregg Bolinger]

I have several projects. I am all full of good ideas. But I wish someone would pay me to work on them.
I have decided that I am probably a better developer than a programmer.
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Happy Coding,
Gregg Bolinger

[Corbin Dallas]

That big ass certification book

[Thomas Paul]

On my own by reading and trying.

[Cindy Glass]

Originally posted by Thomas Paul:
On my own by reading and trying.

In Toms case that can be restated as:
reading and reading and reading and reading and reading . . . .

[Jason Menard]

Had a tiny miniscule amount of Java in school. Mostly learned on the job. My previous work experience had been doing CGI in Perl, along with Javascript and HTML, plus I had an understanding of C++ and OO from school. When I showed up for first day of new job I was told I would be doing Java with Servlets, and I was the only programmer on the project.

[Ashok Mash]

I had to help a batch of University students to learn Java for their exams - So, started learning, practicing and teaching Java- With some C++/Oops knowledge, mastering Java was very easy.
Cleared SCJP in that flow, and I must say, it really paid back all dividents.

[Greg Harris]

i started with C++ in school 2.5 years ago and started teaching myself Java last year. i started the Cattle Drive back in April and it has helped a lot. i have been rewriting my old C++ assignments along the way and also writing some programs for work/co-op credit.
however, i am far from "good" at this point. i can write pretty much whatever i want to, but i doubt that i am upto professional standards as far as my style goes.

[Thomas Paul]

Originally posted by Cindy Glass:
In Toms case that can be restated as:
reading and reading and reading and reading and reading . . . .

Well, of course.

[Ashik Uzzaman]

I started C++ and then Visuall J++ at NIIT. Then went for a short corporate training and learned Sun Java 2 there, where i immediately joined as a faculty....then proceeded to clear SCJP and now thinking of SCWCD with some projects. Liked the language very much and hope it'll continue to conquire....

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Muhammad Ashikuzzaman (Fahim)
Sun Certified Programmer for the Java� 2 Platform
--When you learn something, learn it by heart!

[David Weitzman]

I started with precisely the wrong books. One of them, just to mess with my mind, was written in the early days of swing with com.sun gui components. I got some more useful information off the internet. I think I really began to understand java when I got Java Examples in a Nutshell (the old java 1.1 version). Java was my first language (except for JavaScript if you wanna count it), so it was a slower process. Eventually I figured out that the documentation/source by sun and the internet were the place to get the best information for the lowest price (free). I don't actually have any practical (or impractical) use for programming, but over time I've looked at more code and learned more programming languages and read more books. I guess it's really just an intrest for me and I haven't had any formalish education in any programming topics.

[Amitabh Sharma]

Read a java book one weekend and started coding. of course the fact that i was a C++ developer before that and knew Smalltalk very well helped. later i studied for Sun Java P2 certification and that really helped to improve.