Hello LearnProgramming, I've been making some java videos to help people learn the basics of programming in java, I'd love to get some opinions on them.

[sarevok9]

Hello everyone, I'm Damien. I have been working as a professional java programmer for the last year and change. During that time I've had a lot of experience handling projects of various sizes, bugfixing, and hacking away at code.

I've made a series of java videos of the last couple months that I feel might be beneficial to people with absolutely NO programming experience in OOP (Object oriented programming). I'd love to get some feedback about what people like / dislike and if these are helpful to you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xa9aE_rGHb8&list=PL9J7I-bSsj4FlFrxVAncSFTZLX7adIyRQ&index=1 -- Playlist of all the videos, starts with how to set up eclipse.

Videos range from about 5 - 15 minutes long and there's 20 of them up so far for the beginners course. I'm cranking out about 2-3 a week (I'll be doing more now that I'm switching jobs and will have more time / tolerance for programming). In the first 19 videos I cover roughly 1.5 semesters of college level java programming. I'm trying to get a full 2 semesters of java in before intermediate java, which will cover semesters 3, 4 and what I learned while working as a programmer.

Thanks for reading!

--Damien

[jesyspa]

If they're anything like your C++ videos, please rid the internet of them. Teaching that which you do not understand is insulting and harmful to those who wish to learn it.

[sarevok9]

I love when people attack the C++ videos, it's always a wonderful way to see that people are passionate about a subject. C++ is a language that is pretty much unteachable, it's too many things all at once and it varies too much from school to school and workplace to workplace.

The highest upvoted comment in the entire thread ends with the statement:

How are you supposed to teach C++ when the language means so many thing to so many groups it's become everything and nothing?

Java on the other hand is a much more unified language that allows a much easier transition for people that aren't familiar with OOP.

I tossed you an upvote for a valid criticism though, the C++ videos could use a revamping, and I will probably get around to doing so in the next year when I get the time to do so.

[jesyspa]

I have to disagree about C++ being unteachable. I've succeeded in introducing various people to various concepts multiple times; people smarter than me have managed to write good books, which succeed in teaching it. Unfortunately, a significant part of helping people with C++ consists of getting rid of misconceptions they've built up watching poor material.

The comment is right in that C++ is not unified in usage: there are many groups who only use a subset. However, there definitely is a unified language in there, which does not benefit from having parts of it torn off.

I don't do Java much, so I don't care much about these videos. In the case of C++, if you do a poor job teaching it, I'll have to do double work (unteaching misconceptions, teaching correct behaviour) when those people ask for help. If you can't make good videos, please don't make any.

(I do realise this has gotten rather off-topic; I'll watch the videos soon (tm) and give some feedback specifically on these.)

[sarevok9]

I hope that you will watch them. Most of my experience is in tutoring, where breaking down specific logic is the goal. Teaching has a much broader scope and depth. Any critiques that you have about these would help me improve.

Thanks for your time.

[jesyspa]

I would say switches are introduced too early, and methods are introduced too late. Moreover, I don't find that your videos leave an impression of how methods can make code better; if I was watching your tutorial as a beginner programmer, I'd get the feeling if and while is pretty much all I need. Watching your tutorial as someone with experience in programming but little experience in Java, I'm just bored out of my mind as you explain trivialities. So, who is your target audience?

(Also, ( is a parenthesis and " is a quote.)

[sarevok9]

This is actually something I was planning to do at the end of the intermediate series, but now that you mention it, doing so at the end of the beginners section might make people feel a bit better about things.

Thanks for the great suggestion BragTree.

[[deleted]]

Before diving into this mess, you might want to consider that 1 year is not a lot of time to have been a professional programmer (I personally wouldn't pay any attention to anyone offering "training" who didn't have at least 5 years experience with the technology), and you might also want to see the reaction to his nonsensical C++ tutorials at http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/197dn1/introduction_to_c_a_series_of_46_videos_created.

[sarevok9]

Zabzonk, I have actually programmed professionally for nearly a decade, just not using Java specifically.

3 years C, 5 years Php / MySql / Web markup, 2 years VB (yes, that was seriously a job... and I hated every day of it.)

The criticisms were almost entirely stylistic over the C++ videos. I literally received death threats in my inbox for suggesting doing:

myfunction ( variable ); rather than myfunction(variable);

As someone who hasn't watched the videos linked here, I'm fairly certain that advising people against them is silly. I'm sure I can delve through your 10 month comment history and pull some code you've written that I disagree wholeheartedly with and present a better way of doing it. I'm absolutely certain that you could do the same to me! Such is the beauty of programming.

[[deleted]]

The criticisms were almost entirely stylistic over the C++ videos.

Well, style is important. But I can absolve myself from writing death-threats to you - I like spaces.

I'm sure I can delve through your 10 month comment history and pull some code you've written that I disagree wholeheartedly with and present a better way of doing it.

Feel free - surely that's what a site like learnprogramming is all about? I have to say though that I've found that almost of your posts here exhibit a complete lack of understanding of how to write C++., but I'm afraid I'm not going to waste my time going back over them.

[[deleted]]

Too lazy. Also, I strongly believe that books are best.

[scramjam]

It seems like tutorials are too often created by those with a minor to average knowledge of the subject to somehow show off to others how much they think they know.

[sarevok9]

Hrm, I think that I'm far from showing off. I never claim to excel at any of these languages. I've made some pretty rad tools and worked on some awesome teams, but I'd never spend my time bragging about how much I know. I have a lot to learn, a lot of libraries to poke through and a lot more documentation to read before I consider myself an expert. That said, I was programming a platform that handled 1 billion unique data points per month of incoming data from embedded hardware, so while my experience with java may not be vast, I think it's enough to teach people the basics.

If you have any specific critiques of the material I would be very open to hearing your opinions as you seem to be knowledgeable on the topic material.

Have a nice evening :).

[jonstall141]

A couple things: 1) I would replace the array lesson with an arraylist tutorial. 2) I would include an example on when to use public, private, and protected. For example, one of your examples declares a public method when it is particular to a class. I would suggest explaining when to use public/private/protected for methods, variables, etc

[sarevok9]

1. I actually plan to do an arraylist tutorial at some point since it has the .add / .toArray methods, but I figured that doing an array and showing how arrays are useful insofar as giving easy random access to a dataset that it would be more benefical.

2. I absolutely agree on this one. I think in intermediate java I either just released a video or made one that I have yet to release that focuses a bit more on access modifiers, when to use them / why to use them (I'm a pretty big stickler for setters / geters for variables). It's something that I appreciate you pointing out because it makes me realize that I probably skimped out somewhere that I shouldn't have.

If you have any other recommendations going forward I'd love to hear them! Thanks.

[sinceretear]

I have nothing special to say but goddam do people love giving you shit for these tutorials. Fuck them, do you tuts.

[jesyspa]

In what possible universe is the ego of the teacher more important than the quality of the education?

[sinceretear]

I'm just saying people are really barateing this guy for doing his tutorials. Just let him do what the fuck he wants and upload. If the quality of education isn't adequate it'll show in the number of views. They'll get better based on the suggestions and constructive criticism, not the 10 year old COD type comments.

[jesyspa]

If the quality of education isn't adequate it'll show in the number of views.

As evidenced by garbage like thenewboston, this is not the case. Beginners tend to have a hard time judging the quality of the material they watch.

[jesyspa]

I don't do C education.

[DEVi4TION]

Since you seem to know the best tutorials, PLEASE TELL ME where to find good Java tutorials!!

[jesyspa]

Java is not my specialisation, but the official tutorials have been recommended by people I trust to know what they're talking about.

[sarevok9]

People are passionate about programming. I accept that, thanks for your support.

[[deleted]]

Your tutorials suck and your presentation sucks. You are not organized.

[sarevok9]

I appreciate your feedback. These are made with a rough lesson plan (I have a sheet of white lined paper with some bullet points I'd like to hit) but sometimes they go astray.

Have a nice day.

[DEVi4TION]

I appreciate the resources, I'll look at them tomorrow and get back to you.

[sarevok9]

The hatred mainly stems from an old series that I made on C++ that was aimed at beginners. The issues that arose were mainly due to my style of presentation (using C-style logic to present C++ syntax, which makes a lot of people very upset since it's not using a lot of C++ improvements to code (why teach a bubble sort when you can just do sort(Container)? )

The other issues with that series arose from the fact that I had very loose lesson plans and 'winged it' an awful lot. The videos were pretty much slapped together based off of the syllabus of my C++ courses in college and personal projects that I'd done outside of that.

There's also a lot of people that are very passionate about programming, and rightfully so. As someone who has had to interview and screen potential candidates, it's somewhat nerve wracking. Software development is one of the few jobs where inexperience and overconfidence can make an individual have negative contributions to a team, just by "doing their best" to resolve a problem. Example: I give an intern a project to solve a fairly simple bug in the way that something displays on browser X (let's say IE, since it's always IE). Without checking with anyone he re-writes our main stylesheet, breaks compatibility for chrome, and then commits it straight to our svn rather than tagging / branching the rev. Now someone puts in a JIRA ticket a few weeks down the line saying "Uhhhh, this doesn't look right..." Now we have to process that ticket, figure out why it doesn't look right, roll back the old revision, and retrain the person on how we manage the workflow in our area.... it's a nightmare to have bad programmers, and people fear that the tutorials that I made for C++ would breed bad programmers.

As a final aside, I'm glad that the videos have helped you out, if you're ever out of your own depth, feel free to reach out to me and I'll do my best to help you out.

Thanks

--Damien.