Practice Java Exercises

Posted by Mike on February 20, 2009

I have been teaching myself Java. Starting out, I am reading Java For Dummies. I also needed some kind of practice exercises that give me immediate feedback on how I am doing. Fortunately, through The Java Tutorials’ Weblog I found a great site called JavaBat.

JavaBat is a free site created by by Nick Parlante who is computer science lecturer at Stanford. It contains numerous coding problems and gives immediate feedback if your code solves the problem correctly. (The site can also be a good tutorial on unit test case development. Just study how the test cases are structured.) Helpful links to tutorial pages, as well as sample code, help you learn.

The site focuses on improving your method coding skills. Each area has a large number of problems to solve, ensuring that you can get plenty of practice. It also has the facility to enable a teacher to monitor the progress of his or her students.

I would bet that both new and experienced developers will find something on JavaBat to help strengthen their coding skills. It could also be used as a tool in evaluating potential developers you want to add to your team. Finally, I also like the the minimalistic design of JavaBat.

Uninterrupted Time to Code

Posted by Mike on February 12, 2009

I just read a great article by Paul Graham called Holding a Program in One’s Head. In it, Graham, explores the value of programmers having large blocks of uninterrupted time to code. This seems like a simple way to improve the quality of code and the productivity of your developers.

He lists eight points that help programmers and makes the following observations:

• It’s striking how often programmers manage to hit all eight points by accident.
• Even more striking are the number of officially sanctioned projects that manage to do all eight things wrong.

It looks like there is plenty of room for managers (and programmers) to improve!