[ale] Servlets and NetBeans and .jars, oh my!

Fri Jul 2 14:41:40 EDT 2010

One of my favorite Heinlein stories is about a girl who gets knocked up
by a stranger who swept her off her feet then abandoned her.   She has
the baby and gives it up for adoption.   Turns out she's a hermaphrodite
and the pregnancy/birth has messed her up so much the doctor gives her a
sex change.   Later as a young man he is approached by an older guy who
recruits him into the time police.   One of the first things he does is
goes back in time to find the guy that knocked him up when he was a
woman.   He can't however, resist, having sex with his younger female
self so it turns out he's the one who knocked himself up.   After the
female self gives birth he takes the baby (a little girl) and puts it
with the folks that raised him - as it turns out the baby is him.  After
several years he goes back in time and recruits his younger male self
into the time police.   He ends by saying "I know who I am but where did
all you zombies come from?"

________________________________

From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of Jim
Kinney
Sent: Friday, July 02, 2010 2:22 PM
To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts - Yes! We run Linux!
Subject: Re: [ale] Servlets and NetBeans and .jars, oh my!

But java is self-documenting! All you need to do is run your working
source code through....

yep! it's self-referencing closed loop process - to learn java is to
know java is to learn java is...

It's like the watch in the movie "Somewhere in time" with Cristopher
Reeves. At a conference, an old woman gives him a pocket watch. He goes
back in time and gives that watch to her younger self. Who made the
watch?

On Fri, Jul 2, 2010 at 2:03 PM, Dylan Northrup <ale at doc-x.net> wrote:

And it also seems that, whatever you're trying to do, there's not a
good, piece by piece tutorial for putting things together a bit at a
time.  The HOWTOs and tutorials I've seen always seem to have a step
that goes something like the following:

   Step ???: Download the following jar files: <insert names of several
libraries author finds useful>.  Now type out the code below and magical
stuff will happen because all the hard work is done by the libraries
you've downloaded in the trivial case I've outlined below that doesn't
cover what you want to be able to do.

Ok, I admit, many times the author is not straightforward about
admitting that last bit, but it almost always seems to be the case. It's
not that I'm against useful libraries, but I've not found an author that
a) introduces their libs one at a time, b) gives a thorough description
of the libraries they're using, what the specific benefits are, c)
provides more than one scenario for the libraries they use or d) any
combination of these.

So, if you're trying to do exactly what the HOWTO author is doing,
you're good to go.  If you want to do something else, the HOWTO doesn't
cover it and, depending on what set of libraries you've installed, you
may have to jump through an enormous number of hoops to be able to do
something that seems like a simple expansion on what the HOWTO covered,
but isn't because the methods you need aren't implemented in the
libraries.
</rant>

If someone can point me to the documentation or books I've been unable
to find that explain things clearly, incrementally and thoroughly (more
than one or tow use cases), I would be eternally grateful.

On Fri, Jul 2, 2010 at 12:08 PM, James Sumners <james.sumners at gmail.com>
wrote:

I agree. It seems to me that this answer is really "depends on what
you're trying to do." In my case, I have to learn Java (the easiest
part) + Libraries + Tomcat + whatever else is needed to run/administer
my portal.

On Fri, Jul 2, 2010 at 11:53 AM, Dylan Northrup <ale at doc-x.net> wrote:
> Actually, I think that'd be precisely the wrong place to start.  The
> tutorials there are presented on specific technologies, but are not
put into
> any overall context and there is nothing to tie the tutorials together
or
> show when and where they're supposed to be used.  I know this because
I am
> in the same position as Pete, have been looking for a similar "Guide
to the
> Java Ecosystem" and found Sun's Java tutorials to be utterly lacking
in that
> respect.  Sun's site is great for learning how to implement the
specific
> technologies, but not on why you'd want to implement those
technologies,
> IMO.  YMMV.

--
James Sumners
http://james.roomfullofmirrors.com/

"All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts
pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it
is magnetic to the corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become
drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted."

Missionaria Protectiva, Text QIV (decto)
CH:D 59

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-- 
Dylan Northrup
"Adversity is just change we haven't adapted ourselves to yet."
 - Aimee Mullins

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-- 
-- 
James P. Kinney III
Actively in pursuit of Life, Liberty and Happiness 
Doing pretty well on all 3 pursuits    

 Faith is a cop-out. If the only way you can accept an assertion is by
faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits.
   Dan Barker, "Losing Faith in Faith", 1992

Proud partner. Susan G. Komen for the Cure.

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