What Did You Like or Not Like?

Hi Mark,

I hope this threads properly. :)

Yes, I was refering to Lesson 12 of the Total Beginners tutorial.
In L12, at time 1:40 you have a summary of what you are going to do - the "checkOut method pseudocode". The logic does not match the actual code at the end of the lesson for the method (see page 29 of the Total_Beginner_Companion_Document.pdf). I understand why you had to have the code (later) flow this way. I would change the slide at time 1:40, to read something like:
1. See if the book is _not_ checked out.
2. If so, set the person field in the book to this person (drop the word "use").
3. Let calling method know it did work.
4. Otherwise, let the calling method know it didn't work.
Hope that makes sense.

Again, fantastic stuf you are doing here! Thank You!
(another) Mark.

Hey Mark,

Just completed your third tutorial.  I still miss the banjo music.  But otherwise this was a great tutorial and I am thinking I'll repeat it in a month or so, to make sure all the little different features sink in.  Thank you!

Only comment I have is that, as far as I can tell, Java 6 is not available for Macs yet, so I could not do all the JRE rejiggering you did in one of the later lessons.  However the debugging worked out to be exactly the same using Java 5 (I mean, for example, when the tutorial went into the ArrayList class, the code I saw was identical, same line, same comments, as that in your tutorial) so it was not a problem at all.

Thanks again!
Dan

The tutorials are totally awesome!  I have been in an online class using Eclipse and Java for 12 weeks now, going at it with what I could figure out.  I needed to get some examples of debugging so I found your tutorials.  I decided to start at the beginning and to Total Beginner, Persistance and then Debuggin - they were wonderful.  Despite having a bachelors in Computer Science and just about the end of my Masters these tutorials were great.  In the Total Beginners I learned something new just about every screen change! I was blown away with all the features of Eclipse.

I can't say enough - I did all the lessons of all three tutorials in two days - and now you have me exicted and wanting to redo my homework assignment from the beginning!  I have posted your website URL to my class and hopefully more will join me by taking these.  I have 2 1/2 classes of Java left, so I know I'll do much better now.

Thanks again - I am totally blown away!

I would LOVE to see a tutorial on Swing - as that is where I am having problems.

Thanks again!

Jill

first of all Thanks a lot!!! and excuse my english, im a peruvian guy who is try to learn the language of java. i speak some english and my listening is better that my writing.
So i have friends that dont know anything about english as many latin people, so if you want i can help you to put subtitles to the tutorial and that will be very helpul to a lot of people.
Well thanks again, this is the best tutorial ever!! thanks a lot!! and congratulation for your work!!

THANKS!!!

Mario

yeah!! thats i was try to say ...or write in this case, i can help you to translate this tutorial with spanish subtitle. of couse i will get some help of my english teacher and you wont have to worry about the translate.the text file with the english subtitles will be very helpul. i will send you my email.

i hope that you can understand me!!

Mario

Hello Mark,

This tutorial is just great!....
I have been fooling around trying to get into Eclispe and never succeeded. I have done lessons 1 and 2 and I am very excited about the future lessons.

I have a slight problem in my person class. Since the beginning, I have an error showing in the left column of Eclipse saying: " the public type Person must be defined in its own file". I must say that in lesson 1 things did not happen exactly in my Eclipse as they did in yours. In particular, I was not asked by eclipse to associate the new project with a "java perspective".
I suspect ther is a problem with the file names but I did not see any information in the tutorial companion about this. I would very much appeciate your help to solve the problem.

Thank you agin;
Dilou

Hi Dilou. Perhaps you created a new Project and not a new Java project. If you look closely at the project in the package explorer on the video, you will see a "J" to the upper right of the folder icon. This indicates that this is a Java project. Does your project have this same symbol? If not, just delete the project, and start with the tutorial and be sure to create a new Java project.

Otherwise, let me know and I'll try to help. Thanks. Mark

Hello,
I checked and the project does have the 3J" in the upper rigt of the folder icon.

Thank you ofr your help.

Best regards
Dilou

Hello mark,
Just as a complement, I just noticed that the name of my window is not exactly the same as in the tutorial. My window is titled: "java totalBeginner/myScrapbook.jpage-eclipse SDK instead of Eclipse platform.
Does this make any difference?

I thank you for your help.
Best regards
Dilou

Hi Dilou. I would try downloading the "Eclipse IDE for Java Developers" at http://www.eclipse.org/downloads. If that doesn't solve your problem, I would try posting the question at the eclipse.newcomers newsgroup (http://www.eclipse.org/newsgroups/). You will need to create a login if you don't already have one. That will give you access to many Eclipse experts who will be better able to solve your issue. Hope this helps, and good luck. Mark

I love how you intertwinned Test-Driven Development with the progression of Java and Eclipse features so that the progression of such development seems very "natural".  You integrated use of Eclipse features throughout provides a natural context for learning those features.

One semantical objection - the tutorials move far too rapidly and make far too many "jumps" for an absolute beginner.  I teach programming beginning with Java and will use your tutorials as a review of the Java that you cover but to also introduce the integration of Java, Eclipse and TDD.  I think that the tutorials are excellent if used in this way, but would frustrate an absolute beginner.

One thing that would be very helpful would be an ENTIRE copy of the Eclipse project after each tutorial.  I somehow have a bug in Tutorial #14 that I just cannot locate in my code, even after comparing my code with the listing of your code in the companion pdf document.  It would be wonderful if I could just import the entire project as it should be at the end of tutorial 14 and proceed onto tutorial 15, for I believe that my error is a minor error and proceeding would not inhibit my learning.

Thanks for a truly inspired set of learning materials.

Gerry Donaldson.

I just completed Eclipse and Java for Total Beginners. I had only a little exposure to Java and none to Eclipse. I found the tutorial very helpful.

I don't have anything to complain about. I liked the length of the lessons. I liked the audio-visual approach with the code being typed as I watched. I thought the library example was a good one. I liked the companion document with the code printed for each lesson.

I plan to do the Using the Debugger tutorial soon.

Mr. Dexter,

   I spent ages on the web look for easy to use tuturials. I wanted to learn Java (have a large book) and I heard from other Java developers that Eclipse was a good environment to develop in.

This is the best tutorial i have seen for any kind of tutorial, let alone Java and Eclipse. Having found a tutorial that teaches basics of Java and the development environment was great.

Thanks for you effort. Having the videos are great as they are so clear and concise.

One thing though, is it possible to have a player that plays the videos so it stays on top of all windows? I am playing it through IE7 but I have to alt tab between the video and Eclipse.

I am having a break after doing 10 lessons, but will finish tommorow.

Once again, thanks you very much!

Ravi Rana

Unbelievably useful!
Have not seen such complete, easy to follow and helpful tutorials in my entire career! Most importantly it never confused me or left me in the dark about anything. I felt I had a kind teacher walking with me all along. And he never said "oh you don't know bla bla? Well you are dumb! If you want to know what I am talking about go read bout bla bla in the following link...".
Fantastic work!
I was wondering if you have any plans for making tutorials about J2EE, JSP, Facelets or web services?

Thank you very much.

I think it's great, but what I was originally looking for was how to set variables like:

-Classpath
-JDK_Home

Did I miss something?

Just finished the total beginner thing, and about to move on to persistence, I just have to say that these are fantastic tutorials, and I have loved the insight they have given me in the field of TDD, something I had no previous experience of. Most stuff like this that you stumble upon will eventually lead to you getting stuck on something not explained properly, or when you start writing your own program you find you still have to go buy a book or look through a hundred web pages and forums. The one thing i would have had explained a little more is the whole package thing. Do I need to make a new package to put my stuff in ? What are the naming conventions, can I call it whatever i like ?

Really looking forward to doing the next installment...

the tutorials are cool Im newer in Eclipse than in java but i'am enjoying it any way, as i didn't learn java in a religious way. BUT there is a PROBLEM the || pause and > play buttons are VERY SMALL and make the audience loose a lot of time going back and forward between the IDE and the browser, It would be nice if I could just click some were in the video display and make it pause and play.

Hi Juan. Thanks for your feedback. The Flash files are created automatically by the software I use to create the lessons (Camtasia Studio), and I don't know if I can change the way this works. I'll investigate and see if it can be made easier. Mark

Up to lesson number 9.

likes: numerous, VERY well thought out and presented videos; but one that is worth mentioning is the thorough coverage of unit tests - I think it really emphasises best practise for code quality and that is something we need to strive for from the get go :-)

dislikes: OO coverage

the Book class at one point has both private and public accessor methods along with getters and setters, I think that if I were new to OO concepts that this would confuse the heck out of me particularly when all the methods were eventually changed to package-private and I still had the getters/setters and would therefore have two ways of reaching an object's internals.