do i need special hardware/software

[Tamara J]

Hi I want to learn these subject by myself, I do not want to take any course and that is what is better for me. I want to learn it by myself step by step with a lot of practice (I will ask help from good people like you who I owe alot already). From the first look I have got impression that I can NOT learn these topics (practice)! Why...because I have got impression that I need server, database, network, xml stuff etc to learn (by practice) these subjects. AM I right??
Subjects:
Servelet
JSP
Networking
Database
RMI
JINI
[ February 21, 2003: Message edited by: Tamara Java ]

[David Weitzman]

Originally posted by Tamara Java:
From the first look I have got impression that I can NOT learn these topics (practice)! AM I right??

You may be overwhelmed by all the acronyms people like to throw around, but I assure you that you don't need to take a single course or purchase a single product to master Java in general or any of the topics you listed.
I'm a self-taught programmer but I've never spent a dime on software (you will probably need to purchase some books, though). All it takes is effort and persistance.
As for free tools you might want to fiddle with at some point:
Servers - Tomcat, Orion and Resin (both free for developing, but you have to pay if you want to set up a production server), JBoss, Jetty.
Databases - HSQL, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Firebird
XML - There is a parser built into Java 1.4. Also see xml.apache.org, JDOM, Goole XML links.
In fact, if you look up any of these things at http://directory.google.com/ you'll find plenty of resources.
And of course you've already found one of the most useful Java resources in existence -- JavaRanch! If you ever have any questions, bring them here.
Just take it one step at a time and you'll be fluent in Java before you know it.