2012-12-18, 08:47 PM
You may be better off using Eclipse or a similar IDE (NetBeans is another one. I personally prefer Eclipse). Eclipse is 100x better, in my opinion, especially when it comes to file management.
I think the issue is simply that everything isn't properly managed in TextPad. Eclipse should help with that.
That's just my opinion, I could be completely off with it being the issue, however I think getting off of TextPad now will help you in the future. I've made this recommendation to many people in my own classes, and most of them have thanked me afterwards.
About the bonus issue: Honestly, programming is a major example of "learn by doing." You can look at books and copy book code all day, but it doesn't help if you don't do anything yourself. Even these examples that you have from books, manipulate them. Do things to them that are not part of the project. Anything you can think of, even if it sounds simple in your head.
Then, after you've done a decent amount of manipulating other people's codes, try making your own projects. Think of something random, it doesn't need to be something super cool or something super sophisticated. Just make a program that does something, takes user input, uses files, etc. Then, when you get it all working, think about how you can make it more efficient code. For example, if you have the same code multiple times, wouldn't it be better to separate this code into a single method and just call that method multiple times instead of copying the same code over and over? Always think about error checking. All that kind of stuff.
One of the great things about Java is that it has a TON of two things: Information and Libraries. Java Commenting has the ability to work in comment resource pages in them (/** initiates this). Anyone who makes anything important that they release to other people make use of this. Why is this helpful? Well... There's a library for just about everything, the hard work is often done for you by someone else already. Make use of that. It's a powerful resource in Java. If you don't understand what something is doing or does, you open the comment resource page, and it's all described (hopefully in a helpful way).
Hope this helps.
I think the issue is simply that everything isn't properly managed in TextPad. Eclipse should help with that.
That's just my opinion, I could be completely off with it being the issue, however I think getting off of TextPad now will help you in the future. I've made this recommendation to many people in my own classes, and most of them have thanked me afterwards.
About the bonus issue: Honestly, programming is a major example of "learn by doing." You can look at books and copy book code all day, but it doesn't help if you don't do anything yourself. Even these examples that you have from books, manipulate them. Do things to them that are not part of the project. Anything you can think of, even if it sounds simple in your head.
Then, after you've done a decent amount of manipulating other people's codes, try making your own projects. Think of something random, it doesn't need to be something super cool or something super sophisticated. Just make a program that does something, takes user input, uses files, etc. Then, when you get it all working, think about how you can make it more efficient code. For example, if you have the same code multiple times, wouldn't it be better to separate this code into a single method and just call that method multiple times instead of copying the same code over and over? Always think about error checking. All that kind of stuff.
One of the great things about Java is that it has a TON of two things: Information and Libraries. Java Commenting has the ability to work in comment resource pages in them (/** initiates this). Anyone who makes anything important that they release to other people make use of this. Why is this helpful? Well... There's a library for just about everything, the hard work is often done for you by someone else already. Make use of that. It's a powerful resource in Java. If you don't understand what something is doing or does, you open the comment resource page, and it's all described (hopefully in a helpful way).
Hope this helps.