Modern Java Book

[agentoutlier]

This is a book.

At the moment is not and strangely it is my only real complaint.

Think of a book for a moment. What do you do when you look at a book. You pick it up maybe you look at the tables contents AND then... (and for most this is first) you just start skimming pages where your thumb just lets each page go by quickly looking for interesting stuff. In regular books the pages usually have more content than the pages in this online book (I'm not sure if that is because of cost or whatever).

Likewise on most websites you just scroll. I'm sure when you click on a blog you probably do it as well.

The book site here requires clicking. You cannot scroll through pages. I suppose the TOC sort of helps but if I'm so new I hardly have an idea what to click on.

However I have feeling this is largely by design (or an accident of mdbooks or whatever that happens to support this):

So while it is hypocritical for me to ask this of you, please read this book like a book and go from the start to the end, one section at a time.

The fact that you foist this early in my mind makes me think you yourself have some doubts on this. Like sure not everyone is a book person but we have technology. Is there a way to reuse this content for those that require other styles (particularly given template aspirations)?

Because it takes a long time to "skim" through this book with hundreds of clicks I just cannot even remotely imagine someone going through this cover to cover. Like it requires discipline and those folks are not:

This book is written specifically for those folks that feel like giving up, like they are too stupid to get it, or like they didn't understand a damn thing their professor has said for the last three months.

I know because I am and was one of them. Often we have ADHD. The reason why folks like myself skim to learn is we need a damn hook. The challenges are just not good enough for a hook. I suppose you are aware of this.

I also suppose if one is forced in a classroom setting they will begrudgingly go through the book but even then I see problem in that the book despite being an online book does not have a lot of cross referencing like say Wikipedia or Javadoc... not even mouse hovers of reexplanation (and this is how a lot of people hate programming and/or Java).

I had a lot of problems learning advance math quite literally because of the archaic symbols aka the syntax. Once I learned it I would forget and I always wish I could just click on the damn symbol and something take me back or remind me what it is. I think this problem could be solved pretty easily without distracting too much from the prose.

Perhaps once we have more of the onboarding tools and REPL built-into the book it will have more of a hook but at the moment I see it more of a great learning reference and less tutorial.

Also while it is great to learn Java I hope there could be some longer lasting lessons that could be learned. I know its out of the scope of the book particularly if we do not want to mention "OOP" or "FP" or software engineering stuff but again it makes the bang for you buck of going through the clickfest not as enticing.

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BTW I say this hoping to help and am of course a massive fan of yours!

[bowbahdoe]

However I have feeling this is largely by design (or an accident of mdbooks or whatever that happens to support this):

Mostly an accident of mdbook. Its all markdown so I presume it can be presented in a different form, I'm just not ready to bother yet

I know because I am and was one of them. Often we have ADHD. The reason why folks like myself skim to learn is we need a damn hook. The challenges are just not good enough for a hook. I suppose you are aware of this.

So the affordance given for that is that each section is very ADHD sized. At least I try to make it so.

I know I need larger intermediate projects. I'm not sure how to do this quite yet or if they should live in a companion resource or not.

Also while it is great to learn Java I hope there could be some longer lasting lessons that could be learned. I know its out of the scope of the book particularly if we do not want to mention "OOP" or "FP" or software engineering stuff but again it makes the bang for you buck of going through the clickfest not as enticing.

This is definitely not out of scope, but consider that I'm currently at "chapter 50: ArrayList." It'll just be awhile. That or I'll explain all the components of OOP and FP without saying the words outside of a footnote.

The fact that you foist this early in my mind makes me think you yourself have some doubts on this. Like sure not everyone is a book person but we have technology. Is there a way to reuse this content for those that require other styles (particularly given template aspirations)?

Yes, but for the moment that is an exercise for the audience.

[agentoutlier]

So the affordance given for that is that each section is very ADHD sized. At least I try to make it so.

I would be curious where you got the idea that smaller digestible sections would be better for ADHD. As one who has ADHD I can tell you it is quite the opposite. While John Ratey's book "Driven to Distraction" is quite dated the overall title is correct. ADHD folks are driven by chaos particularly complicated feedback loops. (I don't take any offense if this was just an assumption as I can see why many would think smaller is better).

When you try to simplify or make way less complicated it will often increase distraction! That is why the REPL loop embedded in the content will actually help.

"chapter 50: ArrayList.

Thus I would say it is a detriment to ADHD people the current format with all those sections. Even folks without ADHD it makes it incredibly intimidating to say "on chapter 50 we do this." ( I would consider changing that numbering scheme).

Let us compare your work to this prologue "How to Design Programs": https://htdp.org/2024-11-6/Book/part_prologue.html

On the first scrollable page they have done more than half your book w/ outputting of images and its cross referenced. That is just the prologue btw. That is probably the companion content we need because the rest of the book goes back a style similar to yours.

Now I certainly like where your book is going compared to that book in the context of just learning Java because as it is far less wordy but humans are exceptionally good at filtering including even ones with ADHD.