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I messed up the source file link. So here it is instead.

Thank you very much for this helpful post

Recently started teaching myself java (very recently, like 3 days into it lol), but came to this forum out of curiosity and figured I'd leave a link to the site I've been using. Been very helpful so far.

http://www.codecademy.com/

I personally think that Java is a great language to start with, however C++ is even better, as it set the foundations of OOP and basically spawned all the other high-level programming languages. True, this is about Flash games, but it is dying out -- and soon will become obsolete, thanks to all the new features of HTML and JavaScript. In fact, some browsers are working on implementing C++ natively into them! (How cool is that!?)

In addition, C++ is the industry standard for games. From my personal experience, learning C++ first and then other languages will make your life a whole lot easier rather than vice versa -- learning Java first is simpler, sure, but when the time comes for you to move to C++, all those concepts will seem very foreign, and you'll quit. (At least for a while, anyway)

One thing is common, however whenever learning programming, wherever you start; practice all the time, as Darkroot mentioned.

Hope I offered some new insight!

however C++ is even better

C++ is a great language to start learning but it has a MAJOR drawback: It's capabilities are massive. This sounds good but it is a nightmare for new programmers as the compiler will rarely fix your mistakes this way. Not to mention Logical errors, which will make the debugging process even more of a nightmare than it already is!

Of course it can be circumvented by starting from the beginning (ya know, simple stuff). I don't know about JAVA though.

Doom, do you learn from mistakes better by getting corrected or by seeing the mistake and checking how come it's wrong?

It's better to check your code and look for the mistake, normally your mistake it's just a logical error that you will find some minutes later.

If you understand your mistakes, it's easier to undo future mistakes. If you let someone correct for you, even if you understand why it was not working, it's not the same thing.

Programming is like math. You need to practice to get better and better.

I agree with the above two posts. If you can figure out why, it's much better to fix stuff yourself for better knowledge than to let someone do it for you. I mean, it would make learning programming pretty ironic. Then again, there is a balance to consider, because you don't want to waste time learning Assembly to try to make a Photoshop clone.

That said, Java isn't a very good language to start into game programming. For one, its design philosophy doesn't really seem to support it from its basis. There's a reason most games aren't coded in Java. A good example is Minecraft. In this case, it's mostly to do with garbage collection than with actual code design (though I guess they go hand in hand) - Minecraft allocates 100-200Mb/s in memory, and then throws away what it doesn't use after a small period, which is very inefficient and can lead to lag spikes depending on how long that small period is. The author of Optifine, an optimization mod for Minecraft, has a write-up about it here. Of course, this is partially the coders' faults, since they could probably be handling the GC within Minecraft better using Java. If they were using C++, they'd be forced to use GC correctly, and actually, the way they do it now would be hard to try to implement.

I also heard that for the next generation of graphics APIs (Vulkan, DX12, Mantle) are trying to deal with this sort of issue in order to get more performance for users. Typically, in the past they're had a lot of error management (try/catch) to handle potential errors developers might have left in to make it easier for the user. Now they're relying on the developers to get it right, so that the end user has better performance when it actually works. It's hard to say how much of an improvement they'll have in the more popular graphics APIs like DX12 and glNext / Vulkan, but Mantle has already been used in a few cases, with obvious improvements over the alternative, DirectX 11, for the AMD cards.

All that goes to show that sometimes, in the hands of the developers, more freedom to run and frolic at the expense of messing up is better. One of the most common phrases I hear by great coders and electricians is "fail, and fail often." You don't learn anything by doing everything only correct the first time.

And really, logical errors are as important as arithmetic. It's boring, and can even be painful, but if you learn to do it right and do it a lot, it becomes a lot easier for you in the long run. In my Calc classes, my teacher made us do all the arithmetic and algebra in the problems we covered, even in the examples, just to make sure we didn't develop any bad habits along the way. Sure, you could just put it into a calculator, but then again, do you even need to program? You might as well just click a button that almost does what you want.

Programming is like math. You need to practice to get better and better.

Yeah, it is. I would say a big difference is, though, if you get something wrong, you have an incentive to fix it, so that you can get a result you want. With a bad math test, it's easy to put it away and to try not to think about it again.

Thank You!

Thank You!
Have a good day!
^.^

Great value @Darkroot! Thanks for sharing all these links and the advice. I'll definitely give some of them a try, I've actually already bought Actionscript 3.0 and its a quality book. That was back when I was learning flash. For Java I started with code academy and then I moved on to more thorough material. Currently trying my hand at MySQL using guides like this, not directly related to games, but I think it's a good skill to have.

After that, I'm thinking C++ would be good to know as well.

Thank you soo much for this content.

Thank you Darkroot, for this great post. This is really helpful for everyone to learn Java programming.
Thank you once again for sharing this precious content.

Wow. Impressively hidden, James, I'm almost not mad.

Hey, @UnleashedUponMankind this picture is linked to an essay writing service. Thought you should know.

I took care of it. Thanks for the report!