Theres only so much time in the day, and which skills we decide to teach has a dramatic impact on the lives of students. Does it really make sense to prioritize an. Programming is hard. The only folks who say otherwise are the ones who have years of coding experience under their belts. Its okay to be overwhelmed Theres a. As editor of the Jargon File and author of a few other wellknown documents of similar nature, I often get email requests from enthusiastic network newbies asking in. Teach Yourself Internet Game Programming With Java In 21 Days' title='Teach Yourself Internet Game Programming With Java In 21 Days' />Nick Douglas. Staff Writer, Lifehacker Nick has been writing online for 11 years at sites like Urlesque, Gawker, the Daily Dot, and Slacktory. Now, if we want to get more specific, when it comes to the Java programming language, variables have different types. Brace yourself here, as Im going to try to. The Java programming Language evolved from a language named Oak. Oak was developed in the early nineties at Sun Microsystems as a platformindependent language aimed. Heres where you can find out where you truly spend your time when youre looking at your phone. Tapping the clock icon next to the Last 7 Days button. Explore how our mobilecentric solutions can materialize your digital strategy onboard. How To Become A Hacker. Copyright 2. 00. Eric S. Raymond. Revision History. Revision 1. 5. 00. October 2. 01. 7esr. Link to Things Every Hacker Once Knew. Mention USB stick. Mant updated translation links. Revision 1. 5. 01. July 2. 01. 5esr. Added link to Lets Go Larval. Revision 1. 4. 92. November 2. 01. 4esr. Added link to How To Learn Hacking. Revision 1. 4. 81. June 2. 01. 4esr. Revision 1. 4. 72. May 2. 01. 4esr. Fix up various stale links. Join a hackerspaceRevision 1. Sep 2. 01. 3esr. Add micropatronage explanation and gittip link. Why you should not ask me for advice on how to get started. Revision 1. 4. 51. May 2. 01. 3esr. Open Solaris isnt, and Unity screwed the pooch. Revision 1. 4. 42. May 2. 01. 2esr. Updated the critique of Java. Revision 1. 4. 30. Feb 2. 01. 1esr. Python passed Perl in popularity in 2. Revision 1. 4. 22. Oct 2. 01. 0esr. Added Historical note. Revision 1. 4. 03 Nov 2. Link fixes. Revision 1. Aug 2. 00. 8esr. Link fixes. Revision 1. 3. 88 Jan 2. Deprecate Java as a language to learn early. Revision 1. 3. 74 Oct 2. Recommend Ubuntu as a Unix distro for newbies. As editor of the Jargon. File and author of a few other well known documents of similar. I often get email requests from enthusiastic network newbies. I learn to be a wizardly hacker. Back in. 1. 99. 6 I noticed that there didnt seem to be any other FAQs or web. I started this. one. A lot of hackers now consider it definitive, and I. Still, I dont claim to be the exclusive. If you are reading a snapshot of this document offline, the. Note there is a list of Frequently Asked. Questions at the end of this document. Please read. thesetwicebefore mailing me any questions about this. Numerous translations of this document are available. Arabic. Belorussian. Bulgarian. Chinese. Danish. Dutch. Estonian. French. German. Greek. Hungarian. Japanese. Lithuanian. Norwegian. Persian. Polish. Portuguese. Romanian. Spanish. Note that since this document changes occasionally, they may be out of. The five dots in nine squares diagram that decorates this. It is a simple. pattern with some surprising properties in a mathematical simulation. I think it makes a good. Read more about the glider emblem here. If you find this document valuable, please support me on Patreon. And. consider also supporting other hackers who have produced code that you. Lots of small but continuing donations add up quickly. The Jargon. File contains a bunch of definitions of the term hacker. If you want to know how to. There is a community, a shared culture, of expert programmers. ARPAnet. experiments. The members of this culture originated the term. Hackers built the Internet. Hackers made the. Unix operating system what it is today. Hackers make the World Wide. Web work. If you are part of this culture, if you have contributed to. The hacker mind set is not confined to this software hacker. There are people who apply the hacker attitude to other. Software hackers recognize. But in the rest of this document we will focus on the skills and. There is another group of people who loudly call themselves. Canon Lens Serial Number Tracking. These are people mainly adolescent males who. Real hackers call these people crackers and. Real hackers mostly think crackers are. Unfortunately, many. The basic difference is this hackers build things, crackers. If you want to be a hacker, keep reading. If you want to be a cracker. And thats all Im going to say about. Hackers solve problems and build things, and they believe in freedom. To be accepted as a hacker, you have to. And to. behave as though you have the attitude, you have to really believe the. But if you think of cultivating hacker attitudes as just a way. Becoming. the kind of person who believes these things is important for. As with all creative arts, the most effective way to. Or, as the following modern Zen poem has it To follow the path look to the master,follow the master,walk with the master,see through the master,become the master. So, if you want to be a hacker, repeat the following things until. The world is full of fascinating problems waiting to be solved. Being a hacker is lots of fun, but its a kind of fun that takes. The effort takes motivation. Successful athletes get. Similarly, to be a hacker you have to get a basic thrill from solving. If you arent the kind of person that feels this way naturally, youll. Otherwise youll. You also have to develop a kind of faith in your own learning. No problem should ever have to be solved twice. Creative brains are a valuable, limited resource. They shouldnt be. To behave like a hacker, you have to believe that the thinking time of. Note, however, that No problem should ever have to be solved. Often, we learn a lot about the problem that we didnt. Its OK, and. often necessary, to decide that we can do better. Whats not OK is. You dont have to believe that youre obligated to give. Its consistent with hacker values to sell enough of it to keep you in. Its fine to use your hacking skills to. Boredom and drudgery are evil. Hackers and creative people in general should never be bored or have. This wastefulness hurts everybody. Therefore boredom and drudgery are. To behave like a hacker, you have to believe this enough to want to. There is one apparent exception to this. Hackers will. sometimes do things that may seem repetitive or boring to an observer. But this. is by choice nobody who can think should ever be forced into a. Hackers are naturally anti authoritarian. Anyone who can give you. So the. authoritarian attitude has to be fought wherever you find it, lest. This isnt the same as fighting all authority. Children need to be. A hacker may agree to accept some. But thats a limited, conscious. Authoritarians thrive on censorship and secrecy. And they. distrust voluntary cooperation and information sharing they. So to behave. like a hacker, you have to develop an instinctive hostility to. And you have to be willing to act on that. Attitude is no substitute for competence. To be a hacker, you have to develop some of these attitudes. But. copping an attitude alone wont make you a hacker, any more than it. Becoming a hacker. Therefore, you have to learn to distrust attitude and respect. Hackers wont let posers waste their time. Competence at demanding skills that. If you revere competence, youll enjoy developing it in yourself. That attitude is vital to becoming a. The hacker attitude is vital, but skills are even more vital. Attitude is no substitute for competence, and theres a certain basic. This toolkit changes slowly over time as technology creates new skills. For example, it used to include programming. HTML. But. right now it pretty clearly includes the following This, of course, is the fundamental hacking skill. If you dont. know any computer languages, I recommend starting with Python. It is. cleanly designed, well documented, and relatively kind to beginners. Despite being a good first language, it is not just a toy it is very. I have. written a more detailed evaluation of. Python. Good tutorials are. Python. web site theres an excellent third party one at Computer Science. Circles. I used to recommend Java as a good language to learn early, but. The Pitfalls of. Java as a First Programming Language within it. A hacker. cannot, as they devastatingly put it approach problem solving. Now I think it is. C and Lisp first, then Java. There is perhaps a more general point here. If a language does too. Its not only languages that have this. Ruby. On. Rails, Cake. Programming 1. 01 5 Basic Concepts of Programming. First off, Id like to say that Im writing these preliminary posts in a way that Ill assume you have very little knowledge in programming. I want this content to provide anyone walking in off the street the knowledge to be able to write their first program with the Java programming language with as little pain as possible. So, lets get started with our first topic The 5 basic concepts of any programming language. You might say, Why are we talking about any programming language I thought this was about Java. Well, Ive found that its important to remember that a lot of programming languages are very similar, and knowing whats common between all programming languages will help you transition into any other programming language if you need to For example, with the Java programming knowledge I had obtained, it took me less than a month to learn how to program in a language called Objective C which is used for i. Phone apps.  Thats powerful stuffBefore we start learning if youre someone who also enjoys learning by watching videos, then I have the perfect deal for you. You can get access to over 5. Facebook community of like minded programmers for free for 3. You can click here to learn more about the Java courses. So here are the 5 basic concepts of any programming language Variables. Control Structures. Data Structures. Syntax. Tools. I recognize that these words probably look foreign to you, but dont worry, Ill do my very best at taking the mystery out of them. Now, theres a lot to say about each of these 5 concepts, so for todays post Ill only be talked about item 1, variables What is a variable Variables are the backbone of any program, and thus the backbone of any programming language. I like to start off by defining what were about to learn, so, Wiki defines a variable as follows Okay, well, thats kind of cryptic. To me, a variable is simply a way to store some sort of information for later use, and we can retrieve this information by referring to a word that will describe this information. For example, lets say you come to my website www. I want to do, is ask you what your name is so that I can greet you in a nice way the next time you visit my website. I would put a little text box on the screen that asks you what your name is that text box would represent a variable Lets say I called that text box your. Name, that would be the symbolic name or word for your variable as described from our wiki definition above. So now, when you type your name into the text box, that information would be stored in a variable called your. Name.  I would then be able to come back and say What value does the variable your. Name contain, and the program would tell me whatever it was your typed into that text box. This concept is extremely powerful in programming and is used constantly. It is what makes Facebook and Twitter work, its what makes paying your bills via your online bank work, its what allows you to place a bid on e. Bay.  Variables make the programming world go round. Now, if we want to get more specific, when it comes to the Java programming language, variables have different types. Brace yourself here, as Im going to try to confuse you by explaining an important concept in three sentences. If I were to be storing your name in a variable, that type would be a String. Or, lets say I also wanted to store your age, that type would be stored as an Integer. Or lets say I wanted to store how much money you make in a year, that type would be stored as a Double. What the heck are String, Integer and Double Excellent question In Java, the programming language wants to know what kind of information you are going to be storing in a variable. This is because Java is a strongly typed language. I could teach you about what the difference is between a strongly typed language and a weakly typed language, but that will likely bore you right now, so lets just focus on what a type is in Java and why its important. Typing in Java, allows the programming language to know with absolute certainty that the information being stored in a variable will be a certain way. So like I said, if youre storing your age, you would use the Integer type well thats because in Java, an Integer means you have a number that wont have any decimal places in it. It will be a whole number, like 5, or 2. All of those numbers would be considered an Integer in Java. So what would happen if you tried to store something that wasnt an Integer, into an Integer variable, say for instance the value 3. Well, quite simply, you would get an error in the program and you would have to fix itIn Java, when you specify that a variable is of type Integer, you are simply not allowed to store anything except a whole number. Specifying what kind of data that you are dealing with allows the programming language to use that data in interesting ways. Again, what I say specifying what kind of data, Im just referring to the type of data. Lets dive into the power of assigning a type to your data. What can you do with data typesLets start with a simple example. Your desire is to add two numbers together, lets say the number 2. Java will behave differently depending on the type of the variable thats storing this data. Let me show you what I mean If you have defined your variables to be of type Integer, then adding 2. Integer 2. 5. Makes perfect sense right Of course, this is simple Math. But what happens if your variables are not Integers, but are StringsA String in Java is a different kind of data type and it behaves differently BECAUSE it is a different type of data. When we refer to a String in Java and in many other programming languages we are treating the data like its just a plain old sentence in the English language. A String just represents words or more specifically letters all placed in a certain order. Thats all the English language or any language is, a series of charactersletters placed in a certain order to give meaning to what youre writing down. So now I ask you, what does it mean to add two sentences togetherWhat does it mean to add two Strings together Ill show you. If you were to have two variables, each defined as Strings and they stored the data 2. We would get the String 2. This might be confusing at first, but it makes more sense when we use less misleading data. Lets assume that in our two String variables, we arent storing numbers, were storing words. So in variable 1 we store the String Hello, and in variable 2 we store the String World. Now what happens in your mind if I tell you to add those two words togetherHopefully your natural instinct is to say that the resulting String would be Hello World Thats all thats happening with the Strings 2. Java behaves differently because of the type of the variables. To Java, the String 2. String twenty two, theyre both characters arranged in a specific way. Now I dont want to go into too much detail about types, as this is better suited to programming basic concept 3 Data Structures. So thats all I will touch on for now, but no worries, it will all make sense in timeWant Free Access to my Best Java Courses Alright, so if youre read this far down the article, then youre clearly interested in learning how to code. You can currently get access to my 2 best courses on Java for free for 3. 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