The internet is a great tool for finding information. But in the realm of programming, it can get pretty brutal. There are tons of resources out there that can help you to learn how to program, but they're not always so simple to follow. Often, they only cover a specific scenario and the folks on the forums assume that you're already an intermediate programmer and seem to speak in Swahili!!
What I'd like to do here is create a place that will offer you something a little more than tutorials. I'm going to share my formal education with you. I am not a certified instructor, nor do I hope to be. I do not claim to be a student in the best computer science school in the world. I do not intend to teach you all of the best practices and "right way" of doing everything. But I will try to share as much of best practice as I can, within the scope of this blog, and get you on the right path and teach you the basics. At least this way, you'll be able to hit the forums and know what you're looking for. At the very least, you should learn enough to knock out some basic applications or tools for you to use for yourself :)
My name is Jeremy. I am a CIS major at DeVry University. I'm currently in my late 300 and early 400 level CIS classes. I decided to this both to support the development community by bringing up the interest in programming, but also, I feel that the best way to learn something is to teach it to someone else. I spent a large part of my youth as a percussion composer and instructor for several high schools and I was forced to work in less than ideal circumstances with a wide variety of education and ability levels. I spent a lot of time refining my teach techniques, NOT conforming to the traditional methods, but rather to the methods that produced results while still covering important topics, but focusing on each individual student rather than the lot.
How I'm going to run this blog:
The ONLY way to learn how to program is really to start at the beginning. I'll spare all of you the prerequisite type class material that you'd have to learn in a university like the history and architecture of computers. Although, there are important concepts that I will attempt to explain as they become relevant.
I will refer you to any books that I think would help you. I won't torture you by referring you to technical books that are, in the end, nothing more than a huge reference book.
I will break the site up into lessons. Between lessons, I will post supplementals, off topics, opinions, etc. But for navigation purposes, I will make sure to label the subject lines with LESSON, and so on.
If there any comments or questions in replies, I'll do my best to answer them or even do a demo that outlines my answer to the question.
I will teach this in JAVA. Primarily because it is useful, but also because it will allow me to get deep enough into the manual coding so that you might actually learn something. My favorite language is C# (Microsoft's ripoff of JAVA), but Visual Studio does so much for you that you will end up lost, very quickly.
As I find time, and with any requests, I will attempt to add videos in each lesson or demo to help bring some of my ramblings to life. Be patient.
