Update

So, I haven't posted much lately, but that doesn't mean nothing has been going on.

I was working my way through the Head Start Java book and had made it through about five chapters when an interesting thing happened. I got an e-mail out of the blue one night from a guy who is a regular poster to the WO lists. He had found this blog, was intrigued by what I had written so far, and wanted to know if I needed any help. We got to "talking", in e-mail, and he ended up offering to be my WO "mentor". Talk about a bolt of good luck landing in my lap!

I'm going to refer to this guy by the code-name of Griffin. Because he is well known on the lists, I don't want to expose him to grief by giving his real name and having other newbies flocking to him asking for help. Since he made his original offer he has taken on a big consulting job and doesn't really even have enough free time for me, though he is graciously insisting that he wants to keep helping out. Fortunately I've been so busy I haven't bothered him with much anyway.

Griffin suggested that the java book I was reading probably contains a lot of stuff I don't really need to know right now. He suggested reading Apple's Java for WO Developers doc instead, which I'm most of the way through.

Our next task is to work through the Ravi Mendis book, step by step. I attempted this once before but gave up somewhere in chapter 3. I had run into trouble with some of the exercises, which seemed to contain errors, and finally got frustrated enough to give up. I had found other people posting about the same problems, but not many solutions.

The plan is that Griffin and I will figure out what the real "bugs" are in the book, and what are just misleading things that trick the newbie developer into going down the wrong path. And then I'll post about them here.

We'll be using WO 5.3.1 for this adventure. I had hoped to stick with 5.2.4 until Apple got more of the bugs worked out, but I don't have an install code for it and Apple isn't posting the "trial" codes anymore, so I just could not get it to work. Griffin updated his development environment to match mine, which is a bit humbling and scary since he is doing actual production work with his setup! I hope this does not prove to be a liability for him...

Comments

Looking forward to your continuing adventures!

[Henry]

This is great. I am also working through the Ravi Mendis book and, like you, got stuck on some exercises. I have downloaded the files for the book from the SAMS site, so I can make comparisons where I probably went wrong. I skipped chapter 4-6, and continued with 7. There I could not get the timestamp to work. Now I am working on chapter 8 but am having difficulty with className when I use the User.java in the project. I look forward to read your comments on the book.