Re: JAVA coding environment

Rick,

I'm not a Java coder, but went through many of the same issues on the
.net side. So I'd like to comment. First, why did I take so long to
debug the app? Is it machine performance, or did you bite off too much
to start. Command-line apps are your friend when learning, they're
really simple. As for environment, from the guys that work for me that
use Java they swear by MyEclipse (www.myeclipseide.com) for their
development work.

For your specific questions:

1) Learn the JAVA language

Any good ide (RDi? MyEclipse, Eclipse, etc.) Ideally get a good 21-day
book and use the IDE they use so you can follow along.

2) Gain an understanding of OO concepts

See above, and ask questions. There is a "and then the light comes on"
point in OO education. It all make no sense until one morning in the
shower you go "Oh shi^, that's what it all means" and then you'll never
look back.

3) Understand applets and the use of java script in web pages

Javascript is NOT Java. Other than sharing the same 4 letters they have
nothing to do with each other. It was a piss-poor move by Netscape to
rename ActionScript to Javascript long ago. More correctly it's
ECMAScript, but that doesn't roll off the tongue. As for applets... why?
That's one hell of a place to start. Not only do you have to learn Java,
but you need to deal with the inconsistent browser support and deal with
the applet sandbox. And all for a technology that's generally considered
to be dead.


4) Ultimately understand the role of JAVA in web services so when WDSC
builds a service I know what all the JAVA pieces are doing.

You don't want to understand it all. Seriously. OO design is a much more
layered design than we're used to on the i. In RPG, for example, we have
a few primitives (read, chain, return) and for the most we drive
everything down to those primitives. While it's nice to have a general
understanding of what's going on, there's a huge amount of plumbing in
WebServices that has been hidden by the frameworks, don't try to unhide
it.

5) Possible write the web service pieces from scratch.

You should be able to implement a class that supports the webservice
contract w/out worrying about the details in how it all works down to
the wire level. Implementing a web service is trivial in .net, and I
have to believe it's equally trivial in Java.

-Walden