WJ-1104a Woes

[Stuart Smith]

Thought I would say hi, first post here.

Well I have had really really bad luck with studying thus far, went to uni for four years to study game design and due to illness got kicked out every year for four years even with mitigation, now left with a 30k debt and a bad taste in my mouth.

To top it all of the student loans company (SLC )won�t let me continue my studies with the open university as I owe them an overpayment so I have lost all of my degree credits for the sake of �900 =(

I was studying OO in Java and scored well in the first two tutor marked assignments 98% average, having never studied Java before but unfortunately the SLC withdraw my funding so that�s more uni credits down the toilet.

What�s next�

Being someone that will not give up even after being stamped into the floor by red tape I looked into studying Java on my own.

That brings me to this site and SCJA.

I have read every post on this forum (SCJA) area and hope to get some help in studying this course and get myself certified.

Not in a position to buy the books right now so self study is going to have to happen without them for the time being, but they are defiantly on my shopping list when I can afford them.

Been using a friends sun disks as he has finished with them, I must say that although I have learned a lot, the exercises considering they are for beginners in module WJ-1104a assume knowledge well beyond mine and include code to write that has not even been learned.

I am stuck rite now with implementing a super class / sub class relation ship to create in short an employees class that has the following requirements and any help would be more than appreciated.

Here is a short excerpt of the task at hand.

In this task, you design subclasses and a super class using the information in the following paragraphs (as a group).

Publishing, Inc. has employees in several different positions. These positions are:
Technical Writers, Graphic Illustrators, Managers, and Editors.
Publishing, Inc. wants you to create a program for tracking information about each of its workers. This information consists of: the worker�s name, job title, employee ID (in the range of 1 to 10,000), and level (1, 2, or 3).

Additionally:

Managers must have a list of employees that they manage.
Technical Writers, Graphic Illustrators, and Editors must have a list of skills that
they have. Editors must have a value indicating whether they prefer to do electronic editing or paper-based editing. All subclasses must have a method to display the information for the employee type.

I am attempting to create a UML in Netbeans without luck thus far.

Until this point I have been doing well but this is a blow to my confidence and I hope to get your books real soon as after reading the comments on this forum they seem to be much more structured than these disks, I would have been well peaved if I had paid �600 for them.

I understand more than I am probably giving my self credit for and have grasped the OO concepts, encapsulation using private fields and getter setters, polymorphic methods implementing classes contained in packages etc, I also know how to use the extends keywords to inherit but the task above is well above my programming level.

Any tips or advice would be greatly appreciated thanks.

[Cameron Wallace McKenzie]

Frustration and self-doubt is an important part of learning. Sometimes, it's when you're in really deep that you really learn how to swim.

Please send me a message through the JavaRanch forum. I don't like 'side' conversations, but from reading your post, there is something I'd like to talk to you about.

Kindest regards,

-Cameron McKenzie

[marc weber]

I'm not sure how much background you have in Object Oriented Programming (OOP), but without some basics, it might be difficult to make sense of this task. Have you seen The Java Tutorial online? It's a great free, introductory resource.

As you read through these opening sections -- "What is an Object?", "What is a Class?", etc. -- think about how these concepts apply to this task. In particular, consider relationships like "IS" and "HAS." For example, an Employee HAS-A name, HAS-A title, and so on. A Manager IS-AN Employee that HAS-A list (that contains other Employees).

Let us know how this goes. I'm sure we have people here who would be happy to help you work through this.

[Stuart Smith]

Originally posted by marc weber:
I'm not sure how much background you have in Object Oriented Programming (OOP), but without some basics, it might be difficult to make sense of this task. Have you seen The Java Tutorial online? It's a great free, introductory resource.

As you read through these opening sections -- "What is an Object?", "What is a Class?", etc. -- think about how these concepts apply to this task. In particular, consider relationships like "IS" and "HAS." For example, an Employee HAS-A name, HAS-A title, and so on. A Manager IS-AN Employee that HAS-A list (that contains other Employees).

Let us know how this goes. I'm sure we have people here who would be happy to help you work through this.

Hi there, thanks for the Is a, Has a explanation, I do know about the tutorials you mention thanks and have gone through most if not all of them perhaps it is time to revist them.

My background in OO is some what limited I can use VB.net fairly well and have been using ASP, PHP, HTML, XHTML, CSS, Javascript and played with LUA so I am not knew to programming but I do not really have any structured learning other than the uni work.

I can create basic classes and intergrate swing to methods all very beginer stuff.

To give you some idea of my skill level I had trouble with Hundred task took me a few hours to get the if else the correct way around to grab the args from the command line but I sussed it in the end.

I am having trouble with the Hundred class that you have to divide the String by 80 although loops etc I am familar with.

I think I understand Java's OO concepts reasonbly well but reading will only get you so far I must code code code now till I have more of a grasp of the basic language API.

I have mananged to comprehend the Java3D scene graph and render out a dice application with an OBJ model file that has code to roll a 1-6 but got stuck with transform groups to make the dice spin relative to the dice roll.

Once I have got this damn Java-b class working right I will have a crack at the task above and post some code XD
[ March 29, 2008: Message edited by: Stuart Smith ]