1

I've been reading StackOverflow for quite a while now and I'm only now building the nerve to ask a question. I'm 20 years old and currently enrolled in college in IT here in my hometown (Cluj-Napoca, Romania). Enough for introductions :D.

Basically I have my little software firm that provides Book-keeping appz. They're (horrifyingly) written in Delphi and I want to start from scratch and write them in Java. I've had little experience with Java in the past but I want to learn and I've chosen Java because of the cheap and quality tools the platform offers.

Now could you please point me to the right direction as where could I find some complete documentation (books, web-sites, blogs etc) as where to get some info on properly building database applications including design patterns with DBs(my choice is PostgreSQL and have already ordered a book) and also Java. I know I won't be able to get it right the first time but at least get it close to right.

Thank you

Improve this question
1
  • 1
    And welcome to Stack Overflow! Commented Jan 8, 2010 at 11:16

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
4

First of all: welcome at so :-)

There are a lot of good and free resources covering Java as a language ( e.g. wikibooks ), and the reference documentation by Sun is also quite comprehensive. Once you have understood the basics of the language, I think its time to dive into the depths of database applications, and patterns. How?

First of all, you should try to build some simple database schemes, "playground"-scenarios are helpful from what I can tell. Imagine e.g. a library and try to model that. It doesn't take long yet you will learn a lot.

For patterns, I generally think of them as a guide, like the MVC pattern which you will likely incorporate. Don't force yourself to use them all in the first place, try to understand one at a time and refactor your code to have some pattern represented there rather than writing to a pattern in the first place.

So, good luck! ( and of course, once you're stuck, just ask! )

Improve this answer
Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

1 Comment

Thanks a lot, also for the quickness of the answer. I have a few books ob the language itself which I read but that's just the tip of the iceberg. Will look more into MVC and what's it all about. Again thank you
2

Head First Java is a great place to start.

Head First Java

Improve this answer

4 Comments

Thank you Chris, will try to get my hands on this book also
I think I'm also going to get Head First Design Patterns. Is it good?
Yes, it's excellent! However, I would recommend waiting until you have completed a few projects first. You will get more out of the book if you have some experience and cases to relate it to. I actually think Design Patterns may lead you down the wrong path if you don't have sufficient experience to guide you (i.e. you may get "pattern fever"). So, spend at least a year of two doing development and then go pick up a copy of design patterns.
But... aren't patterns like MVC useful to start with? I may be new to Java but not really new to programming. And I would like to build the appz in Java properly and following good patterns.
0

Martin Fowler's "Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture" is quite popular.

http://martinfowler.com/books.html

Improve this answer

Comments

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge you have read our privacy policy.

Start asking to get answers

Find the answer to your question by asking.

Ask question

Explore related questions

See similar questions with these tags.