A Little Mention for Java
Writing this blog retrospectively means I may have glossed over a teeny-weeny fact. Before I’d spoken to my colleagues and properly figured out what I wanted achieve with coding, I’d spent a couple of months learning to code with Java.
I’m actually quite glad I went down the Java route first as it really did highlight the simplicity of Python syntax and also introduced to coding concepts that are shared between the two languages. It also meant I was lucky enough to create two “hello world” programs. Here’s the classic “hello world” code in the two languages.
Java:
Python:
See what I mean about the syntax? It just seemed like there was less ‘fluff’ with Python. Somone far more adept at coding than me will probably be able to list of many reasons why Java has the extra code and the advantages, but for me as a beginner why make things complicated? In fact, that’s point number 3 in ‘The Zen of Python’ - Simple is better than complex.
If you’d like to learn Java, this blog probably isn’t for you but I’d recommend giving Trevor Page’s tutorials and podcasts a go. His podcast is called “how to program with Java” and all the resources are on his website: https://howtoprogramwithjava.com/. In addition, I’d recommend downloading an app called ‘SoloLearn’ for your phone. This contains excellent tutorials for Java (and Python) all of which are free. I’ll mention SoloLearn in a later post as it’s great for Python.