Projects

One of the problem I saw in my earlier attempt in learning Java is I did not have any other objective from Java. As my day job does not required me to know Java. So when I tried to learn Java using books, I tried to follow excersise at end of chaptor. Since being new in Java I found myself just typing the code written in the books. So when ever I wanted to solve some problem using Java I found myself referring to book more than thinking about problem also this has some thing to with Java's complicated File management structure and GUI structure. The 2 main ways showing the results. As now I am going to start with J2ME (Simple GUI and RMS) and Python (Easy File handling and comparitively easy GUI) I should not have those issue. So here I am planning to do...I will be having projects to judge my knowledge. For J2ME I have decided on following projects. 1> J2ME apps for creating shopping list - This will be usefull application for me. This will help me create the shopping list with check boxes and I can check the things. The first version will allow me to add some thing into list, delete from list or delete all entries from list. But it will only have one list. As it would be difficult to add new entries in small phone, in second version I will create another list which will act like a master list, user can add into master list as well current shopping list. It will help user to select from master list and copy to current list. This way users can avoide adding entries into shopping list. I am planning to use higher level GUI APIs for this like Forms and Lists and Alerts. 2> J2ME apps for stop watch - This will be a simple Midlet which will allow users to use their phones as stop watch. This will be using low level GUIs like Canvas. 3> Python utility to show Calendar - This will be some thing like cal utility in Unix. 4> Python clone for WINZIP - This will make me confortable in GUI in python. I am not yet decided whether to use Tinker or WXPython. But will go with the one which gives me maximum productivity. The final project would be expense tracking application with sync feature with Python application. Use can track their expenses using this Python application and I am planning to use Mysql as my database. It will also have a J2ME client which will allow users to enter expenses from mobile phone and leter sync with main Python applications. Hope fully this should give me enough work.

Why now?

Even though i told in my last post that, I am passionate about all those things but till then I don't know much about all these technologies. I will be using this blog to capture my journey to learn all these things. Actually my day job demands me to work on Database technologies like Oracle or SQL server. But I want to develop more generalise softwares which will help lot of people and not just the people in company I worked in. Actually I started learning working on Java in 1996 . Hmmm I know its 8 years now. I know my intention were correct. So what went wrong?? One thing the people like me who worked on RAD tools like Developer 2000 or Visual Basic is we can see what we are doing almost instant. So I will just develope something in Visual basic in lets say 7 - 8 days. I am talking about a complete application which works and has some useful functionality. When I tried to learn Java, I did not reach to GUI section till in I finish almost 200+ pages of the book. Then I realised I should not have compare Java with Visual Basic, instead I should have compare Java with my experience with C. So I started one more time to learn Java with C style. Now when I learned C, what I used to do is writing some Unix utilities on my own like wc , grep etc. There I got my other surprise. When I tried to do that in Java I found Java's file handling is again very complex. Its very powerfull but complex. That makes you thing about file handling as a problem instead of problems in hand. These were my 2 attempts to learn Java in last 8 years !!! So now why do I think I will learn something ? There are 2 things which are changed. One I will be using this blog to capture my progress and I have correct expectations from Java. So I choose J2ME to learn Java instead J2SE. There are 2 reasons for that, as GUI for J2ME is far more simpler than normal Java and file handling (persistance storage - RMS) has far simpler syntax than file handling in J2SE. I guess once I learn all basic concepts in J2ME and then move to normal Java when I am ready. So what about Python and MySQL ? As I said I am more intersted in writing softwares for PCs than Cellphones. I guess even we will be using our cell phone more in future, our PCs still be the centre of our digital experience. So I want my cell phone applications should always be talking to atleast my PC if not any server. So Python fits perfect for this, as its reputation of fast development and robust functionality, since it also allows me to write some kind of system software to talk to my phone and J2me apps. I will be using Mysql as a repository for all kind of data. As all kind of applications would need to store data in some form. So lets see how this journey goes