If I were excited to apply Java programming to some ideas I've had (some going back 20+ years), would it be better to start the project alongside going through the course, or wait until I finish the course? The advantage of doing a project alongside the course would be increased enthusiasm to learn new programming skills I can use for the project. It would probably mean accelerating my learning in areas relevant to the project. The downside would be potentially doing parts of the project the wrong way regarding stuff that I haven't learned yet in the course, possibly hours of work that would have be completely redone after I learned I had done it wrong way.
Should I try to dive in now or hold back until the course is done?
Start a personal project during or after this course?
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Andrei
12 July 2021, 08:42
There are multiple ways you could approach this:
1. CodeGym offers the games section where you can code various games such as Snake ... Can have a crack at those.
2. You can research simple games for Java, such as TicTacToe and try that in parallel.
OR
3. You take one of your ideas, and work on it in parallel with your studies. But remember first you need to create the logic and the code comes last, after everything is already figured out.
Have fun.
+1
Justin Smith
5 August 2021, 15:41
Thank you. One of the things I was hoping to learn more about is how to make use of other libraries to do things I can't do natively with Java. On this site, we work in what I have come to think of as the "CodeGym Bubble". We might have some tasks that tell us to import some things (either via import or package), but those things have put in the right place for us already and we don't have to go find them, and the tasks usually tell us specifically which things to import.
What would be really useful is a lesson built around finding the library to do what you want to do, and setting it up correctly. Most real-life projects involve using libraries that other people have built (so that you're not reinventing the wheel). For example, if I want to be able to work with data in Excel files, I have to find a library, download it, put the files in the correct place, and import things correctly. I tried to figure this out on my own, and found it quite daunting.
Maybe even have some tasks about this... like the task would instruct you "We want to do x, so we'll need to find a library to import that lets us do this. Go to this website, and find this library. Download, and open the zip, and put these specific files from the zip at this specific location. You can now import the code into the project with this line." And so on.
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