My situation : hobbyst developer with some prior experience ( C# XNA) , cover to cover these books :
Thanks a lot for any tip !
Building and deploying, it is also crucial you learn how to configure your IDE. Do it.
As far as I’m concerned, learning XML and stuff is something I will do when the need for it arises, so far I’ve been using json.
It depends on you wanting to close the gap between being a hobbyist or being a programmer.
Building, deploying, etc. are as already stated a crucial part of development and sometimes can take up the same amount of time as pure development.
For comparison: If you build model ships you neither just start with a piece of wood and some glue but you start by planning it out and preparing tools.
EDIT: In the end using tools such as maven or ant allows you not having to bother with building a jar, writing the manifest, signing it and so forth as the tool does it for you. So, write one script an reuse it
Your average hobbiest Java programmer doesn’t need to bother with any of that crap.
Learn what you need to. Do things and if you hit an obstacle, learn it. You do not have to know everything immediately.
That’s good advice (JVallius). I think too many people try really hard to learn everything they can as quickly as possible and then burn out. Programming is an odd thing, you have to get into the mindset and then it will come a lot easier. The first few months are crucial as you will develop habits that you will (most likely) keep for the rest of your career unless you actively try to break them.
I have studied design patterns in school. But when I needed them in my work, I had to learn them again. I do not say that learning them at school was a waste of time but you need to refresh your memory anyway if you do not use regularly the things you have learned. It is good to know that things exists, but learn them deeply only when you really need them.
Exactly. And there’s no point in learning today’s tool if you don’t know it because by the time you need it there’s probably a new one…better! strong! faster! Da-dah-Dah-da-dah!
I’ll keep my mouth (mostly) shut. 
No, please, share your thoughts.
Semi-inside joke. I’m very anti-design patterns…I consider them harmful.
Yeah I have not needed most of them, especially in game development. Singleton is the only one I have used so far. Maybe they have more place in business world.
I can appreciate design patterns… in 3rd party code.
I find maven and ant so idiosyncratic and clumsy. Why must they be programmed in XML rather than the language we already know: Java?
Luckily, If you use an IDE then it will do everything for you automatically. Another cool option is something that the jgo user Nate made:
Actually that one’s easy to answer:
They are programmed in Java. It’s just that the primary way of using them is via an XML script.
As for ANT (and Maven, though Maven makes it a little bit more complicated): You can call any ANT Task from Java code as well if you prefer to, I tend to use some of them for stuff such as running Shellscripts as the ANT Tasks already are heavily optimized and tested.
Thanks again : really nice people here around ! 
I will start to learn the basics of Eclipse.
So the proceedural generation is it somewhat random. What I would do for the object is list some component shapes and connectors that can be “stretched”. You could apply set rules to when using the components this would create more natural modular stations.
A reasonable start. Once you are comfortable with Eclipse I highly recommend learning how to craft and build a simple project on the command-line using ant. ant is pretty much Java’s version of C/C++ make.
It’s good to know what’s going on under the hood and if you ever want to distribute your project and/or share code with other developers you’ll have to know how to package it up so that someone else can consume it.
A lot of the crap that is popular is crap. Avoid what you like, especially if you aren’t being paid/forced to use the crap. It takes a lot of experience to be able to tell if something is crap though.
Well, XML is a bloody red flag.
Don’t I know it 
Cas