Java!

Recently I got the bright idea to just sit down and put some time into learning how to program in Java. Why? My ultimate goal in which programming language I wanna figure out is C++, but every time I try that, it gives me a new reason to hate it (for instance, I wrote some code in Dev-C++ 4 which compiled and executed, but would not compile in Dev-C++ 5 anymore). Also, Java is under the GNU General Public License now, it runs the same on multiple platforms without much thought (like Perl), and it's less picky than C++ (and is therefore a good stepping stone along my journey to finally tackling C++).

I started with Sun's tutorials, beginning with basic command-line apps to get the syntax down, then moving into the GUI tutorials with Swing. I'm not putting high priority on learning Java applet programming right at the moment, because nobody likes Java applets anymore.

And so now I'm at the point where I'm attempting to program my own things from scratch. A logical place to start was to create a Java class for the CyanChat protocol. The goal of it is to match the functionality of Net::CyanChat, and then one day I might even program a "Java CyanChat Client", to complement my current Perl CyanChat Client (and by Java CC Client, I don't mean an applet; the standard CyanChat client is an applet -- I mean a GUI application).

My CyanChat package is named org.kirsle.network.CyanChat for right now. Eventually I intend to program a RiveScript interpreter in Java, to open the door up to Java developers to get into the world of RiveScript (and because the only RiveScript interpreter currently in existence is written in Perl). Then, one of my goals in C++ is to compile a "RiveScript.dll" file, which can be dynamically linked with C/C++ programs or any other language that can dynamically link a DLL. :)

Since I'm serious about Java development, I made a nice lil avatar for Java-related blog posts, and spent more than 5 minutes creating it too.