Java for Breakfast

In recent months I've gotten the privilege of working far more closely in the development world of software.  Matter of fact some could call me a bit of a coder now. I've brushed up on a bit of .net and a whole gaggle of Java. Running through a few small projects building simple calculators and mad-lib's games.  I've even attempted to create a text based adventure game.  When I was about 11 I started writing a new story of Voltorn(A pencil and paper RPG created by me), and thought it would be fun to try in Java.  :)  It is fun, it's just amazing how much more in depth you can get with a programming language, no less an object orientated one, as opposed to Microsoft Basic.

With my first project I've put good use to what I know thus far with Java and how it interacts with the rest of the design world.  We are mostly dealing with backstage coding(Where the code we write does the work, but doesn't really interact with the user at all) and anything we really interact with is XML, Java, and JavaScript related.  I've had some limited experience working with all three of those tools, but what I didn't expect was the amount of new tools I would be exposed to regarding uploading and pulling files for our group to work together with the same files.  If I needed to make a change to a class file, I can just pull the live version and then post it up to the main site. Project Managers can then take a look at the file seconds after I've posted it for verifications. The project is also going to written using a Struts style.  Pretty amazing stuff.

 The tools we are using are mainly Eclipse (An IDE used for Java programming), maven (a took mostly used with eclipse to import/export projects into the IDE), and SVN(A Linux based server that we can connect to using terminal to pull new/shared code from).  Eclipse I've used in the past, and for the most part haven't been the biggest fan of.  It's starting to grow on me, the sheer amount of plugins this program supports is pretty amazing.  I've always been more of a command prompt compiler, but realized for larger projects I would need a program with some backbone to take care of all the grunt work in the back.  For my own home use, I prefer Netbeans as it is far more user friendly, and great for beginners.  It runs a bit more like .net and I enjoy the presentation and ease of installing plugins and identifying issues with the code.  I just believe it works better.  I've heard that the more in depth you get with projects the more you will lean toward Eclipse, but who knows.  It works most of the time, so I can't really complain. Maven is great for running clean installs, building code and compiling work in terminal.  And SVN is a different way to pull new code for projects.  In projects that I've worked on in the past I always sent files using an FTP server.  This is similar just with using terminal commands as opposed to having a GUI.

We are also using Oracle Enterprise manager. Using oc4j in terminal we are able to start up the server and run files on a GUI based manager that allows us to see the websites we are interacting with.  When it works it's awesome.  I've ran into some firewall issues with errors and whatnot, but I suppose it will work itself out in the end.  I look at using this as something similar to using a router in your home.  I remember having to make password changes on our wireless router at home and the setup with this Oracle Enterprise Manager is very similar in many ways.

I've also become more comfortable using terminal commands as most of what I've done so far with this first project is learning various ways to send files, change files, build, compile and alter programs. I found these tutorials to be extremely helpful in learning how to work in a multiple languages scenario.  Using either Netbeans or Eclipse.

http://netbeans.org/kb/docs/web/quickstart-webapps-struts.html#login

http://guyofgisbourne.blogspot.com/2009/02/first-install-maven-2-as-appropriate.html


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