Rolling Title.

Picking up speed here. I've been negligent in my Java learning because I have to do it when I'm home, and let's face it, after 12 hours on the road I want to get home, play with my kid, and pass out.

Ah, but this is where the Android phone is a handy tool. I can code any time, anywhere. Using the web browser and TxtPad Lite I'm good to go. I write and review code on TxtPad, and upload it via my web host's control panel.

There is a down-side though. Yesterday I was at Seven-11 buying milk at 10pm (necessary to get my daughter to go to bed), and figured out why some php I was working on wasn't playing nice with MySql as I was standing there with the freezer door open. So instead of checking the expiration date, jogging to the counter to pay and rushing home to get my daughter her bottle of milk(she drinks enough man, trust me, the kid isn't starving. This is more a matter of Mom being tired and wanting to put her to sleep), I grab the gallon of milk with my right hand and the Android from my pocket with my left. Pull up the local file of the code, drop the milk onto a box of Slim Jims, and start coding away.

After ten minutes and feeling some odd looks (and swapping the now warm milk jug for a cold one), I jumped in my car and by the time I got home it'd taken as much time as if I'd jogged there and back.

"Did you stop for a drink?"

"No."

"What took you so long then?"

"I figured out some bad code and had to correct it."

"In 7-Eleven?"

"Yes."

"Are you $%#*ing serious?"

Ohhhh!!!! DENIED!!!

Donald Knuth (or the Don* of this blog's title), says flat-out in the introduction to "The Art of Computer Programming" that you should have already written and tested 4 programs before you start the book. So, I guess I'll have to do just that.

If I have to pick a language to program in (and yes, I know that the Don* refers to a made-up code in his book, but I've got to pick up something real to do the 4 prescribed "write-n-test" tasks with), then it's got to be Java. I know of it. I worked with it often when I worked with a website design company. I have an Android smartphone, and I'd like to develop apps for that platfrom sometime down the road. So, Java it is.

I've been dicking around with Greenfoot (which is recommended by Sun Microsystems as the jumping off point for people with no experience in learning programming to mess around with to _start_ learning about programming), but here's the thing . . . I'm not into whole "wombat" thing. I think I prefer the "hello world" route.

Anyway, Sun also says that Greenfoot is a good beginning for people _who don't have an interest in programming_. Well, now, that's not me. And I'm not gonna watch those damned wombats running circuits again. So, let's jump right into BlueJ, shall we?