Learn to Program in Java

You can start programming in Java today. It's simple, free and there is an abundance of resources. The language has been around for decades and is used by many companies. Because it is so widely used, Java programmers have many job opportunities. There is a very large and active support community on the internet.

Computers use a language of 1s and 0s called assembly language. This is not human-readable code and would be extremely difficult and time-consuming to write code for.

 

There are many Object Oriented Language programming languages that are much easier for a human to understand that will create the computer code for you.

 

Object Oriented might sound confusing at first, but it simply means that you are programming with items (objects) that have certain known properties called states and behaviors. A state would describe the item, such as name, size, and color, and the behavior is what it can do, such as move, be filled, emptied, and tip over. An everyday object with these states and behaviors could be a cup.

 

Java is an excellent program to begin learning to program with. Here are a few reasons.

 

Easy. It has an easy-to-learn syntax, making it a great choice for beginners. Additionally, Java is designed so that its code will run on any platform. This means that you can write your code once, and it will run on Windows, Mac, Linux, etc. It is also used for Android programming. You don't need to learn how to write code differently for each environment.

 

Java is Free. Java is free for downloading and development use. For commercial applications, there may be licensing fees, but anyone can download it and start using it. Java is developed by Oracle. You can download it here, https://www.oracle.com/java/technologies/downloads/

 

Training is Free

Oracle has free online training resources and documentation. https://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/java/index.html

 

There are tons of complete YouTube courses available for free. One of my favorites is a trainer Mike Dane from Giraffe Academy. He will walk you through the complete installation process as well as writing your first programs, and well as teaching the concepts of design as well. After you have finished learning Java, Mike also has courses for many other programming languages.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLAZ4kZ9dFpPpdR_9IQBUDLjYalvdrGGb

 

Development Tools are Free.

Once you have downloaded Java, you can write code in your plain text editor. This is actually no fun. There are applications called IDEs for Integrated Development Environments. There are many of these applications, some are free, and some have charges. Something IDEs have in common is integrating a text editor and a window that will run your code within the same interface. There are tools built in that can help you with your code. Different parts of your code are colored differently, so it's much more readable and easy to pick out mistakes. 

Some popular IDEs are:

 

NetBeans - This is from Apache and is free. You can download here, https://netbeans.apache.org/download/index.html

Eclipse - Eclipse started off as a product of IBM and now is it's own independent entity. The Eclipse IDE is also free. https://eclipseide.org

IntelliJ Idea - This is by a company called Jet Brains. There are two versions of IntelliJ IDEA. One is called the Community Edition and is free. There is another paid version with many advanced options. When you are first starting programming, these are options that you will not need. https://www.jetbrains.com/idea/download/

 

With an easy-to-learn language that is free to download and free to learn with lots of job opportunities, why wouldn't you start today?