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My day job would be greatly enhanced if I could learn java to code some apps to assist me. Trouble is, I suck at programming. I've never really programmed apart from some basic HTML stuff for some random sites, and some qbasic I did in school many eons ago. Is there any hope for me as a coder? What should I guy like me do to earn this new skill?
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Are you set on Java?
I would recommend Python as a first language:
Python http://www.python.org/
or also another language similar to Python:
Ruby
Anytime I need to write a program to assist something I'm working on, I will generally use Python. Python and Ruby were designed with humans in mind rather than machine resources. I have programmed little in Ruby so can't make recommendations on resources. As for Python, there are extensive introductory materials / free online books at
Python.org.
There you will find the following great and generally free resources:
BeginnersGuide/NonProgrammers Python Resources
I would also recommend considering
Scheme (a dialect of Lisp). MIT uses Scheme in its introductory courses. Take a look at the
MIT OpenCourseware for those with no or little programming experience. Scheme is not an object-oriented programming language. For that reason, learning Python would be more portable to other object-oriented languages.
As for Java, I don't believe I ever have had a book on Java. I previously knew how to program in C++. There are extensive free documentation and introductory materials on the web (on Sun's website). Also, programming in Java or any other language is much easier with a good development environment. For Java, I would recommend checking out the free open-source
Eclipse Development Platform.
As for Python, I have use the
Wing IDE.