Path: csiph.com!x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net!usenet.pasdenom.info!selfless.tophat.at!feeder.erje.net!eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Eric Sosman Newsgroups: comp.lang.java.programmer Subject: Re: StringBuilder Difficulties Date: Thu, 30 Jun 2011 21:36:18 -0400 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 30 Message-ID: References: <971fj1Fg1rU1@mid.individual.net> <9744m8FpnhU3@mid.individual.net> <1v-dnd5CMOdnepHTnZ2dnUVZ_hmdnZ2d@earthlink.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Injection-Date: Fri, 1 Jul 2011 01:36:52 +0000 (UTC) Injection-Info: mx04.eternal-september.org; posting-host="BrOwaJANne849xlH+KPYjQ"; logging-data="31922"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1+qLMyit3i0/5CrkVFRJsAH" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.18) Gecko/20110616 Thunderbird/3.1.11 In-Reply-To: <1v-dnd5CMOdnepHTnZ2dnUVZ_hmdnZ2d@earthlink.com> Cancel-Lock: sha1:GOIyblKvzl7Pj34wI8JLW9P4ChY= Xref: x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net comp.lang.java.programmer:5806 On 6/30/2011 5:17 PM, Patricia Shanahan wrote: > On 6/30/2011 1:30 PM, blmblm@myrealbox.com wrote: > ... >> But I have some sympathy with the desire just to get something >> running: I spent a number of hours a while back trying to teach >> myself some Scheme and in the process trying make it conform to >> my strongly-typed-languages-trained mindset, and I'd probably >> have done better to get a good introductory book and try to grok >> the no-types(?) mindset. (Maybe I'll try again at some point.) >> > > I've tried several approaches to learning programming languages, and the > one that works best for me is to get an introductory book, and work > through it, reading each chapter and doing the exercises. To this I'd add (and perhaps this is reflective only of my own modes of learning): Get hold of some samples of good code in the language (or "believed to be good," since the learner is in a poor position to judge), and read the code. With the tutorials and reference works at one's elbow, of course. "Why didn't he need to grab a lock here?" "Oh, *that's* how you handle file-not-found!" And so on, and so on. I still recall learning SNOBOL years and years ago by studying the SNOBOL source of the SNOBOL compiler while frantically flipping pages in the SNOBOL book. My grasp of the language SNOBOLed. -- Eric Sosman esosman@ieee-dot-org.invalid