I want to say hello to everyone on my first post, as you all know first impressions last. 
I’m an 800 year old female Elf trapped in an 18 year old guys body. 
I’m taking a software diploma course that involves VB.NET and Java next year.
This year it was all C++ and VB 6.0.
I have started C++ when I was 13 years old, built myself some nice useless apps. A word editor then I stopped C++ until the start of this year. C++ was very difficult for me at the time. I had grasped most basic concepts while others killed me.
I live in Australia and I love programming. Just because I hadn’t been using C++ doesn’t mean I hadn’t programmed once I stopped C++.
I stuck to QBasic and then DarkBasic.
I have made a game at the start of the year. An RPG to be exact, even though it was a console game I had several working things:
Magic system.
Potion System.
Battle System.
Random Enemy database (all battles were random).
Inventory System along with a long list of other things.
I tried to catch up with my C++ this year and I learnt enough in 1 month to make a game. Of course the learning came from myself. The class wouldn’t teach advanced features of C++ until the 2nd semester which I have already nearly finished.
Next year they are going to dump C++ and go for Java, my friend does a computer science degree and also does Java.
I had hated Java, mainly from my earlier experience a few years ago when building an app. Guess what? It was too slow. :
A couple of weeks ago I decided to download the latest version of Java as well as an IDE because I’m going to use it next year and 2 years after that for my Computer Science Bachelor. I use JCreator, it’s worth the money, you can trust me on this.
I’m not here to market. It’s just that JCreator is so much like Visual Studio and I’m very comfortable with it.
The reason I decided to download it was so I can get comfortable with Java before next year.
Surprisingly, Java compiles bloody fast. It compiles 694 lines of code from scratch in seconds.
Yes, I made a game with Java straight off. I had taken a an advanced tutorial just showing me the differences between C++ and Java and the rest was natural.
One thing I can say is that I now love coding in Java.
There are other factors to take into contribution as well, no manual garbage removal on my side. People tell me it’s a feature that makes programmers lazy. I tell them it gives me more time to work on optimising my program after I find that no logical errors exist.
My only biggest problem is finding Swing tutorials. Sure I know how to knock on a button, label and a text box.
Good event listener tutorials are hard to come by though. 