SK needs java help

[SaberKitty]

i'm taking compsci and... well.. i'm kinda sucking at it. i have a mental block against using semicolons or something (well... that was what 30 out of 33 of my errors were last time )
yeah- so if you wanna be helpful and stuff i'd appreciate it- i'll have aim open when i get to class

(the teacher is nice and would help, only there's like 26 other kids who need help too- blah)

thanks sooooo much,
SK

[Dragon Phoenix]

Here, have a few:

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[Mackay]

I recommend the Whitlams. Best. Band. efvvver.

[Dragon Phoenix]

Sweet. She's doing a Soopy.

[Vinny]

you know how to find me SK.

<--- comp sci major

Why the heck are they teaching Java in high school? Why aren't they teaching C++ or Pascal or something. Blah.

Or do you mean javascript?

[extropalopakettle]

How would C++, or Javascript, be more appropriate?

[Vinny]

Java is a painful language to learn on.

[Digglu]

yeah but once you get the hang of it it's like the greatest thing ever

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"You may not make sense, but at least you're enthusiastic about it"

[wordcross]

I actually did a Pascal>C++>Java sort of progression. Pascal, imo, is a good language to start with for people who need practice with general syntax (i.e. semicolons). Nowadays most highschools start with C++ (My favorite language, but only because i'm better at it ). Java, i agree, is a painful way to be introduced to compsci.

I'll help where i can, if you need me and noone else is around who's better at it

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If a person with multiple personalities threatens suicide, is that a hostage situation?

[Beartalon]

I'm here too if you want help, but I'm not on AIM that much.

[SK]

do any of you know how i can get to the gl if the school blocks pretty much any unknown site?
ive tried typing in the ip but it doesn't work for the gl- any ideas?

[MacadamiamaN]

I think Digglu showed me a thing on his site that was a kind of applet that let your browse the internet through the applet, while the URL that the tyrannical powers above are looking at remains the same.

[Neo]

When my school had the GL blocked, we figured a temp way around it. Go to an online translator, (we used babelfish) and translate www.greylabyrinth.com/forums from any language (we used German, since we could puzzle out some f'ed up words from that, Korean works well too) to English. The page appears in a frame, so you should be able to browse it freely. Some words are "translated" wierd, and sometimes it won't translate an entire page, and if I remember correctly, sometimes there were wierd cookie errors, but it was better than no GL.

[SK]

Yay! it works! is there a way to do it with graphics too? they're all xes.

-SK

[extropalopakettle]

[wordcross]

but most students don't start learning that stuff until they've mastered the basics of syntax and function code. Beginner students jumping right into Java have to learn all about classes and object oriented programming before they can even write the simplest program. It's much easier just to write some functions and call them from Main, that way it's broken down into understandable bits.

Also, learning C++ requires (later in the course) a discussion on pointers and memory which will benefit any programmer, even though Java does away with pointers. Granted, Java is easier to use once you've learned it, but C++ is a more gradual learning experience, imo, and so is better for those who lack previous compsci knowledge.

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If a person with multiple personalities threatens suicide, is that a hostage situation?

[Sparhawk]

What about Visual Basic? I think that is the best current starter language. It is easy to learn, has a great IDE, and doesn't have any semicolons!

The problem with C++ and Java is that to use them properly you need to understand OOP, which is not an easy concept to grasp.

[wordcross]

well, ideally, if a student wanted to take the time to go through levels and things, s/he could go basic>pascal>C++>Java or whatever, but realistically, since most schools start with C++ anymore, i think I would opt to use that as a beginner level course.

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If a person with multiple personalities threatens suicide, is that a hostage situation?

[Digglu]

SK go to http://dons.usfca.edu/efende2/window.html it's sorta the same thing as babelfish, as in the page you want appears in a frame, and it should work the same, but a little easier

[edit]and in case you're wondering, the pages you go to within the frame will not appear in the history or the address bar[/edit]

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"You may not make sense, but at least you're enthusiastic about it"



[This message has been edited by Digglu (edited 07-10-2003 02:09 PM).]

[Digglu]

oh something else that tends to work is emailing a link to the gl frontpage to yourself in hotmail or whatever, then opening it into the hotmail window frame, you should be able to browse normally through that too

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"You may not make sense, but at least you're enthusiastic about it"

[Neo]

SK, i don't think there is.

And that only works if your school isn't uber-stupid and blocks all the email sites like my school does.

[Sessie]

We started in Pascal and then went to C++, and I think next semester I'm getting into assembly, which Diggs has told me is...painful. Next semester, though, they're switching the introductory language from Pascal to Java.

...

I suddenly realized that this post has no point at all. I guess I just saw CS stuff going on and thought, "OOH!! I sort of know what they're talking about! Let me post! Yay!"

[Digglu]

well it's not really "painful" but it's really annoying to debug (on the plus side though, it teaches you how to interpret hex values straight from the main memory ). that, and it takes 4 commands just to print something out...after a little bit though you get used to it because it does exactly what you tell it to do heh. yup. have fun with it

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"You may not make sense, but at least you're enthusiastic about it"

[Sessie]

Don't all of them do exactly what you tell them to do?

[SK]

oh well, it doesn't really matter much any more- as of thismorning they have a login thingy for the internet and not just the computers- apparntly, while going from the school's homepage to babelfish to the gl, i accessed 147 inappropriate sites(who would have think it?)
2 of which were the gl (the home page and the forums).
the teacher didn't have a problem with it but we thought it was rather funny i was the top offender(the next person down the list was some kid that dowenloaded like 60 songs durning the course of the day)

anywho, we apparently can't use the internet anymore at all because any popup add deemed "innapropirate" sends us to the office- any download suspends us or something. and no more aim!
mucho blah!

-SK

[Neo]

SK, how'd you pull that off? Don't you type URL's like normal people?

[SK]

yeah- i think that there was some popup from babelfish or something and i dind't see it and it changed or something- otherwise, i have no idea wqhat happened
unless osmeone elase logged in as me (very possible)
meh, i don't care.

yesterday blackjack and nim, tomorrow wumpus world! (apparently we need to save the princess!- i'm very excited!)

[Digglu]

actually sessie what i mean by exactly is if you tell it to put stuff at a certain spot in memory, it will do that. with assembly you do a lot of low-level stuff you can't do in languages like java. java saves time by doing stuff for you but it's akin to saying "run to the nearest tree" as opposed to "lift your left leg, move it forward, plant it down, push off of it, etc". it's kinda fun to use when messing with your friend's computers remotely heh

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"You may not make sense, but at least you're enthusiastic about it"

[Sessie]

Yeah, I knew what you meant. You just reminded me of my CS I professor, whose favorite thing to say was, "Computers have a really bad habit of doing exactly what you tell them to do."

[MacadamiamaN]

SK, your school is very tyrannical, is it public?

[Digglu]

hm if it were public i'd think it'd be less tyrannical, at least that's how things are here

[SK]

public- but it's because it's connected to the entire school system. I have to log in through my school, even though i'm taking cs at a diff hs. apparently last year, some kids downloaded a few viruses and they had to take the entire school system( elementary middle and HS) off the network while they removed it from every computer. since then, they've been internet nazis.

[Vinny]

~agrees with Wordcross

you can't just jump straight into OOP (that's Object Oriented Programming for SK) when you're a complete newbie to computer programming. Pascal is the best language to learn in imho. C++, Javascript, VB let's you become familiar with compiling and language interpretation concepts, subroutines and functions, i/o parameters, return value, etc, before slapping you with the concept of Objects, Methods, Inheritance, etc.

I don't know, maybe I am just being old fashion.

[Neo]

SK, I'd vote on the somebody else logging in. I don't get any popups from babelfish.

[Beartalon]

It could have also been someone logging in before her. It only takes one doofus to open a pop-up, and they doofuses are popping up all over the place.

[Beartalon]

And: I'd also say start with VB, or Pascal.

It will be hard though to find a current commerically viable language that isn't OOP. Microsoft is soon pulling the plug on what is now it's legacy stuff. I wish I had learned C++ along with Java and VB.

[SK]

java isn't bad- i mean it is intensive since summer school is from 7:50 until 2:20- so that's quite a lot of programming, but the language isnt' that hard- (although a also now keep forgetting the eyntax for arrays and have to go look it up in my notes)
i don't see the problem wiht learning java since the AP compsci test is in java.... (our teacher thinks we could probably cover the ap comsci stuff by the end of the course and then he'll teach us ai stuff(w00t!))
it's spiffy and not too hard- it's very much like solving puzzles

-SK