Scott Reid

I agree with Carey Brown. If you download the latest version it will either be backward compatible with the programming examples in your reference book. Or! At the very least your chosen IDE software will highlight code that is outdated/superseded and offer to automatically correct such outdated/superseded code!

I posted a few weeks ago with regards to downloading the JAVA API as a PDF file. However, it does seem as though Oracle is reluctant to allow this. Seemingly it prefers that JAVA users access the documentation online!

Of course, if a company does not wish to release their documentation in a PDF download, that is their prerogative.

In this post, I wish to offer an alternative and rather simple method of getting the API information you require (admittedly still not in PDF) downloaded to your device so you have access to the information you need at any time!

First, download and install the freeware at the link below! It's entirely free! Not even any ads!

https://www.httrack.com/

HTTRACK will take the web address you give it and will scrape that location down to the depth of links that you choose. It will also retain the structure of the online pages.

Once you've downloaded HTTRACK and figured it out (trust me, it's an easy program to work with!) point your web browser to,

https://docs.oracle.com/en/java/index.html

On the above java web page select the correct link for the flavour of JAVA you are interested in until you get to the specific documentation you wish to download. Once you find the page with the documentation you want, copy and paste the web address into HTTRACK set it to download 4 or 5 links deep!

Voila!

You can have the entire API documentation downloaded to your PC. Ok, it's still in html format, but it will still work even if your offline, obviously!

I stand whole heartedly behind my belief that the job of academia is to give it's students a good and broad grounding in their chosen subject!
It is then up to industry to mould those graduates into the kind of employees they need !

I quote, "Ihardly think that a whole-semester course in Java programming  that ends with kids still not knowing anything about objects or still has them writing all their code in main() is an effective way of teaching, much less a way to give kids a good "basic foundation" of OO programming."

No student ever, anywhere, in any field of endeavour in the entire history of the human race (let alone since the dawn of educational establishments) has EVER studied a single aspect of their chosen subject for "a whole semester"!

Programming is a branch of computer science, not an entire subject on it's own! At best, programming accounts for 3 hours per week of their course and then only over a 6 month period per year across a 4 year course!

At this stage, all they have really proven is that they are capable of learning! Nothing more!

I think you are falling into the trap of "the jaded pro". You are forgetting the backup, the assistance, the advice and direction, the sheparding which you received when you first stepped out from the University onto the beginning of the road of your professional career.

You may well be tired of answering the same old question over and over again, but you had these questions once and someone took the time to sit with you and give you their advice!

That's how people learn! From the bottom up, in small manageable chunks, over time! Then in small, manageable chunks over time, over many years and through different companies!

I've seen this so many times! It happens in every industry!

My main point in my post above was that;

A: The method of teaching isn't wrong! That's been proven conclusively for the last 2000 years! Otherwise we still wouldn't have fire!
B: Expecting people to walk into a programming career and be instantly capable of coding whatever is handed to them without needing help, assistance or further information is utterly unreasonable!

More still, trying to introduce OOP concepts before teaching the basics may well produce more capable and knowledgeable programmers! If so, it will only produce 2 per class of 30! The rest will have quit in the first week!

As for the newbies on here! Myself included! Most of them are studying programming in their own time, for their own desire!  

I've just always understood multiple inheritance to be combining object A with Object B to create Object C which would inherit an amalgam of the methods and properties of both A and B!

That is to say that multiple inheritance would mean each object having more than one 'direct' parent!

Junilu Lacar wrote:I was actually able to find some literature that I can cite. I did a search on research into misalignment of industry and academia in Computer Science instruction and found several articles. One article even summarizes the issue quite well: "However, the gap that exists between what is taught at school and the skills required to perform on a job is so wide that a high percentage of young graduates are said to be unemployable for lack of needed skills that would make them profitable for any employer."

Junilu. There is no such thing as a further education college or university which offers courses which aim to turn out world class experts in any field let alone programming. It is the job of a further education establishment to turn out students who have a good all round "basic" grasp of their chosen field! People with "potential"!

Further to that, if a company is too tight to take on young and inexperienced programmers (or any other profession for that matter) and train them up for the companies more specific requirements then that company obviously doesn't give a crap about their employees ambitions or potential and as such that company is undeserving of quality employees.

As for courses unfit for purpose, people have been learning from the ground up for centuries! It is the tried, tested and proven best method.

If all the above isn't convincing enough, there is nothing more difficult to learn than that which is abstract, and programming is 100% abstract! OO principles just add yet another layer to that abstraction!

Thanks for that Tim.

Hello everyone.

Having only recently joined the site I've noticed a lot of forum requests for decent beginners books for Java! Now, I've been trying to get my head around Java for a few years now (please note that I'm an electronics technician, not a programmer) and I've tried a whole plethora of books in my attempts to get a handle on Java. All to no avail!

Until now, that is!

I don't know what it is about all the books I read before that I could quite get a hold of, but somehow, at some point I found myself getting bogged down in some area which didn't seem to make sense to me!

In the last two weeks I've been reading Doug Lowe's Java All-in-one for Dummies 4th Edition!There is a 5th edition available now, but the 4th is still highly relevant. So far I haven't come across anything which is outdated!

Best of all, for some reason, EVERY THING IS FINALLY MAKING SENSE! 😁. I don't know if this is down to the many abortive attempts to learn and somehow it's now making sense, but I think the book deserves the credit!

Every subject is approached excellently in a step by step manner in plain English. No terse or vague explanations that leave you no better informed than before you read it and none of the superfluous verbosity which leaves the reader wondering if he needs to re-learn English first!

I bought my copy from Google Play Books (sub £20), where I purchase most of my books these days. However, you can find it in just about any decent book store online or in the real world.

For those who are taking their first steps into Java or into programming as a whole, this would be a fantastic book to begin with. However, one thing I learned about learning when I was at college is that no single educational book will ever make 100% sense! Its to the students advantage to purchase around 3 books for each subject! That way, if one book explains an aspect of the subject in an obtuse manner, with luck, one of the other two will help lift the fog!

All the above said, I'd recommend this book as an essential purchase for anyone just beginning to program in Java for the first time. Even if you're an experienced programmer in another language moving into Java.

It was a post from a while ago! I thought it might be a common question though as the Oracle site seems determined to not give a download so It might be worth pinning the post!

As for the version number, a quick delete of the url from the end back to the last backslash (not inclusive and you should be able to download other versions!

I must also make a correction to the first post! It isn't a pdf download but an Html download.

Have a quick search on Google for Android Studio for (assuming your on Windows). After installation everything is ready to go!

I saw a post from someone who was asking for a download link for the pdf version of the api and other documentation.


https://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/documentation/jdk8-doc-downloads-2133158.html