Justin’s Reviews > Learn Java the Easy Way: A Hands-On Introduction to Programming > Status Update

Though it's seldom discussed in technical books today, I find it helpful to use a concept called active recall to learn without exercises. Just pause a moment, or turn the page before attempting to write the example code. Writing variations thereof also helps. The thing to avoid is simply a copy and paste challenge which is simply a waste of time.

The GUI - UGH! Why do GUI editors never work? Why do tutorials rely so much on GUI editors? These are the great metaphysical questions.

I will have to try loading the code from GitHub to see how my *auto-generated* code failed to allow the Window Builder to show any components, properties, or anything really.

So far the book assumes you know next to nothing of programming let alone the syntax of C-based languages like Java, so it's a bit of a slow start for an experienced programmer.

The exercises are smoothly increasing in complexity, which is one of the most important qualities in a book to learn another language.

The instructions to setup the programming environment worked flawlessly.