Frequently Asked
Questions (FAQ) About
This Course
Course Title and
Description
- Title: Java Programming with Passion!
- Description: This
course is for anyone who wants to learn Java programming for the
first time or enhance their knowledge on Java programming. In
this course, students will learn how to write,
compile,
and run Java programs first. They will also learn essential object
oriented
programming concepts such as inheritance and polymorphism. Each
week, students are expected to do weekly homework
after studying the presentation and hands-on lab material. There
is
also class group
email alias where students can ask questions.
Course Objectives
- By the end of the course, students are expected
to
- Acquire enough Java knowlege and skillset to
start J2EE
Programming online course
- Students are also expected to experience the
following during
the course.
- Having extreme fun!
- Being passionate!
- Appreciating what you've got!
- Appreciating your fellow human beings!
- Enjoying little things in life!
What is it like
to
take this course online? How do I get started?
- Online attendees of this course are expected to
do the course
work as following
- Read the pre-class reading material at the
convenient time of their choice - the dates specified are only for the
guideline
- Read the presentation slides at the convenient time of their choice
- Do the homework - the due
date of all homeworks is two weeks after the final class so you have
plenty of
time to finish them
- For each topic, there is a homework. The
homework is at the end of the hands-on lab. The instruction on
how to send it and where to send it is also specified there.
- Participate in class email alias
for asking and answering questions
- At this time, I don't have any plan (nor
resource) to offer
real-time webcasting. I am looking at a possibility of creating
the audio from the presentation material, however. Since there is
no real-time webcasting, you can start this course anytime.
When will this
course be offered again?
- It
is my plan to offer this course on a regular basis maybe 2 or 3 times
per year.
- The next session will
get started 6 weeks after the previous session gets ended.
The exact
date will be announced on the class alias and on this website.
If I take this
course again in the next session, should I resubmit all the homeworks?
- No, you don't need
to. If you make some changes, you can resend them.
What are the prerequisites?
- Previous programming experience with other
languages would be useful but not required.
What software and IDE
are we
going to use in this course?
Where are NetBeans
related resources?
Are
there Windows tools that might help you do homework's?
- cygwin
(download setup.exe and then double-click on it)
- Freely downloable utility programs that
allows you to use most Unix commands within DOS terminal
- Examples
- grep Hello */* */*/* (to find all
references of "Hello" string among any files under */* and */*/*
case-sensitive)
- grep -i hello */* */*/* (to find all
references of "hello" string among any files
under */* and */*/* case insensitive)
- diff file1.java file2.java
- InfoRapid search
and replace utility program
- Freely downloadable utility program that lets
you search and/or replace any string in a directory and its
subdirectories
Do I get a
certificate if I finish all the homeworks?
- If you submitted all the homeworks, you will be
given a certificate.
- The certificate has no affliation with any
colleges, educational
institution, company. Instead, it is just my personal recognition
that
you have done your share of work, thus successfully finished the course.
- You will be noted as "Graduates of the course" in the class website. You can
see an example from another
free online class I teach.
- At the end of the course, I will ask you to send
the following information to the homework alias
- <name>, <country of origin or
nationality>, <your thoughts on this course>
How do
I know the homeworks I sent are received? Can I get some confirmation?
- If
your homeworks are not bounced back, please assume I received
them. It has been working for two years with no problem.
- The
list of people
who submitted all the homeworks are posted to the "Graduates
of
this course".
If your name is not there somehow, I will work with you to resolve it.
Do I
get any responses from instructors regarding the quality of my
homeworks?
- The homeworks are
designed in a way that you know you have done your work or
not. In other words, you should not submit a homework
unless the work is done. If there is a vagueness in the homework
description, please post it to the class alias so that it can be
discussed and corrected by the instructors.
- Unless it is an
extremely unusual case, you will not get an individual response from
instructors indicating the quality of your individual homework.
This is more or less due to time constraint of the instructors.
Given that there are thousands of students taking this class, and
instructors are teaching this class as their spare time activity, there
is simply no way each homework can be reviewed/commented/corresponded
by instructors.
When is the deadline for
all homeworks?
- All homeworks are due
by 2
weeks after the last class. You are recommended to do the weekly
homework, however.
Can I resubmit a homework?
Would this course
prepare me for Sun Certified Java Programmer Certificate exam?
- Yes,
taking this course will prepare you to take the Sun Certified Java
Programmer Certificate exam.
- There
are some online materials for Sun Java Programmer Certificate exam
Can I take
"J2EE Programming with Passion!" online course after I am done with
this course?
- Yes.
- By
the way, you don't really need to understand all the
topics in order to start J2EE programming. For example, you will not
need to understand AWT/Swing. You will get by without that much
understanding of the Java threading as long as you have basic concept
of threading. Not much need for I/O and so on.
What are ground
rules for posting questions to class email alias?
- When
you are posting a question, please make sure you've done
your share of work. Make sure you read the relevant
documentation, presenation slides, FAQ, and other postings before you
post your question.
- Also
please capture as much relevant information as
possible such as following
- trace of the exception
- screen output message of the failure
- environment variable settings
- OS platform you use
- Even
though the folks who usually answer questions
(including myself and Sean) are trying to address them as speedy and as
best
as they can, please understand that these folks are using their spare
time and resource to do these as voluntary activities. Please
also
note that answering questions like "I did this and somehow it doesn't
work" kind of questions are never easy to answer. Consequently
not all questions can be nor would be answered in timely manner.
- Please
ask questions that are relevant to the topics of the week
if possible so that we can have more focused discussions.
- If
you find any answers to the questions, please feel free to
post to the alias so that other people can benefit.
- I
know sometimes you want to send technical questions directly to me
(Sang Shin) and Sean Dockery but doing so is strongly discouraged due
to the following reasons:
- In
most cases, you will get faster responses by posting them to the class
alias. After all, that is what the community is all about. I
expect members to help each other on technical questions.
- I
personally cannot keep track of who sent what questions due to the
large number of emails I have to deal with. (I am sure many of you are
in the same boat.) Your questions posted on the class alias will remain
there so that they can answered at a later time by someone.
- In
general, myself and Sean are always and extremely stretched out in
terms of available time I have.
What are the
suggested netiquettes for posing to the class email alias?
- Please do not post a
simple "Thank you" note or "Hello" message to the class alias.
This class alias is subscribed by several thousand people so please be
aware that these messages are considered as noises by many people.
- Given that we are all
living in "instant messaging" age, it is not unreasonable to see folks
posting their messages using just lower case letters like following and
I know it is perfectly acceptable in instant messaging.
- "i write this with
only lower case letter i."
- But for posting
messages to an email alias where more than 2000 people are subscribing,
I would recommend everyone to follow a couple of guidelines if possible.
- Start a statement
with a capital letter like following.
- "I write this
with a capital letter I."
- Please do not use
short-hand.
- "u are my friend."
(Not recommended)
- "You are my friend."
(Recommended)
- Now having said that,
I know large percentage of the folks on this alias are not speaking
English
as their first language (including myself - I speak Korean at
home.) Please don't feel intimidated in posting. Less than
perfect English grammar is perfectly acceptable.
Where do I send
feedbacks about the course contents and other matters?
- You can directlly send them to me.
Are there any online
reading materials?
- There is no
designated textbook for this
course. Instead,
we are going to use publicly available online materials.
- The following online
materials are considered quite useful.
Where do I find the graduates of
this course?