Week 1

Oh the joy. Uni is back, my summer holiday is over, and the Melbourne weather has reverted to its usual dreariness.

It's the end of week one. I don't normally go into uni during week 1 as there's no labs, and it's rather boring, but I had the day off work, so why not. I forgot how fun it can be - there was the usual first week sausage sizzles and free stuff. The vibe in the air felt youthful. Shame I don't feel youthful anymore - I've been studying at Monash for 5 years now.

It's been several years since I last even looked at Java, but even my lack of knowledge, and my lack of reading before the lecture didn't make it anymore interesting. I understand the logical side of programming, but I get stuck on the programming side of programming. I know I need to tell my program to expect import from a user, but I never remember how to do this.

I'm studying two subjects this semester, FIT2034 (Computer Programming 2) and FIT2001 (Systems Development). FIT2001 recommends students keep a reflective blog for both bonus marks and because, historically, students who blog perform better. I may disagree with the correlation, however I do think it is a good idea, and perhaps two blogs are better than one (or maybe I should just have one blog and tag the entries...).

This semester, I went to Officeworks and paid $25 to print and bind my unit book / study guide, and I've already noticed how much easier it's made things. Sure, it's 288 pages (well, 144 pages) that I didn't need to print, and the whole point of PDF is to avoid the need to print things, but it's so nice to be able to jot notes down. I wanted to get an iPad or eReader to avoid printing, but I don't think either of those applications have something to make notes on PDFs? Besides, there's something about writing things down that technology will never replace. For me, at least. 

Revision

• import java.util.*; goes at the top, the very top, before the public class bit
• To use the import from the keyboard, you need to use: Scanner console = new Scanner(System.in);
• When comparing one String to another (eg String1 and String2), don't use ==, use String2.equals
• A nested if/else statement is more efficient than sequential ifs
• Even the lecturer gets confused as to what the value of i is when it looks like i++ + i + ++i

And that's up to page 33 of my study guide... Only 24 pages to go.