theguy0000

i just started today actually and i have a fairly good understanding of the basics.

Kilo

If you want to learn C++ in the end, why learn Java first? Just for school? In my opinion Java is pointless if you have C/C++/C#. Besides the point Java web applets are done(no more) no matter how much any one attempts to argue it Java is going into the gutter! BOOO! BOOO! I would also like to add that I also have to take 3 months of Java here soon. *YAWN*

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para

If you're serious about programming, be it for fun or for a career, I recommend skipping Java and going to C++. I feel I should say I've never written anything in Java, nor do I know the language, but I've been made aware by a friend of mine who had to take several classes on the topic of some of the language mechanics (for example, and this may mean nothing to you now but it will: deallocating memory back to the heap can not be done explicitly in Java.. ouch).

Now I think for a beginner the difficulty of you learning either Java or C++ is going to be about the same, but C++ has (I feel) a much larger potential for writting applications/games than Java. Because of the diversity of C++, you may want to consider trying your hand in the language for a few days (coming off Java) and see how you like it. I think you will be surprised.

Of course if you need to learn Java for school, obviously you're going to have to learn it anyhow. But I should still consider giving C++ a chance after you finish. You can start here http://www.cplusplus.com/doc/tutorial/

I would say for C++ (probably about the same for Java), around 2 months to be fully comfortable with the basics and ready to move on to slightly more advanced topics (inheritance, etc). After around a year of practice and learning new things on your own, you'll be ready for more intermediate topics (polymorphism, binary trees, linked lists, other mid-range data types), and after a few years you'll be ready for advanced topics (function pointers, dynamic programming, sockets, system API, etc). Of course you can never fully learn a langauge, so the longer you work with it the more advanced your code may become I think this is the average learning speed.

Jessehk

I would agree. It took me a long time to get a grasp of the basics, but now, as a result of reading, trial-and-error, and doing exercises in books, I feel confident in C++ syntax. At my stage, one would probably move on to learning binary trees and linked lists, etc. It took me about half a year to get where I am. So, going back to the original thread topic, I would say from my expirience (sp?) learning C++, that it would probably take about (1/2) year to learn the basis of Java.

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Klipt

You don't need to. It has a garbage collector. You can explicity call that and all unreferenced memory will be released, but explicit calls usually aren't necessary.

What's dynamic programming?

Bruce Eckel also has a free book called Thinking in Java.

para

I didn't say you needed to. It's benefitial to be able to explicitly deallocate memory without needing to invoke a GC.

It's an interesting topic. Basically if you solve a problem by breaking it into subproblems, some of which may be the same. The idea is to temporally store the result in the event it is needed again, thereby increasing the efficiency of solving the larger.

There some more information on it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_programming