How did you learn to program with Java? (minecraft)?

Hi Tyler, I'm working on a site that brings together online programming resources in one place. You can search for beginner classes, and there are some good free ones too.

http://www.everpath.org/search?query=java

I looked briefly on Everpath and found these two options that could be good for you:

Udacity's Introduction to Programming in Java: https://www.udacity.com/course/cs046

Udemy's Java for Complete Beginners: https://www.udemy.com/java-tutorial/

Good luck!

I do know how to program in Java. But I don't know how to write Minecraft mods, and I suspect it's a nontrivial problem.

If you learn programming, you learn from the bottom up. That means starting with stuff like adding two integers together, printing a message to the screen multiple times, and other extremely simple things like that. You don't just jump straight in and start making Minecraft mods with no previous experience. No one does.

Furthermore, if you want to get the most out of learning programming, then don't do it for a single very specific goal. Do it because even in general you enjoy building logical structures that do things for you automatically. Or, if you don't enjoy that, then don't get into programming in the first place.

There are many different languages to program games in. For example, C#, C++, Python, Java, etc. Your going to have to pick which one you want to learn first (what is easiest?). Once you've done that, you can follow easy tutorials online to make simple programs, but if you want to make a game thats as complicated as Minecraft, your going to most likely have to take classes. You'll also need to practice the language a lot. Online tutorials aren't going to get you far. ;) Hope I Helped! ~kymaster

Java isn't a hard language. But if you've never thought logically and critically (laterally) at the same time, it will not be fast.

I learned java in a few days, spending maybe a few hours a day. But I'm extremely computer literate, as I was before learning java, had and obviously still have good problem solving, critical thinking, and logic skills.

Before someone says, "You didn't learn anything advanced," sure I did: I learned all the way through advanced concurrency (i.e. threading, thread-safety, synchronization, intrinsic locks, guarded blocks, the like), reflection, etc.... I found it simple.

It really will depend. After I learned java, I'm now in a computer science course in university. It's not hard, and I've learned naught so far. I learned many languages after java, on my own. If you've learned any programming language before, it will be very, very easy for you. And HTML does not count -- it is not a programming language, it is a markup language.

But as aforementioned, it will depend. In my courses, I've seen people that had trouble grasping the concept of variables. Those which couldn't comprehend methods, classes, instantiation, and arrays. It all really depends on how you think. Generally, as a rule of thumb, if you are an artistic person, you will have more trouble with it. If you are a maths and science kind of person, you'll be fine.

As for Minecraft -- probably a bad idea. I've made mods for it (which I still update for some reason), plugins for the server-side modification, Bukkit, most of which I also still update. I can tell you right now: the second you decompile the Minecraft jar file, you will be so confused. Luckily, the tool most use to do it, MCP, provides decent documentation for the source. But even still, finding what you need to modify can be a nightmare. It doesn't help that there are so many files that it's hard to find anything, let alone that all the variables are named junk. Getting a good grasp on the language first would be better. Asking anyone for help would result in "go learn java first," almost guaranteed.

Now, to address the final point, where I learned: myself. I taught myself, originally. I took someone else's code -- with no knowledge prior, mind you -- and looked at it. From this, I understood almost every single basic programming concept, only from this one program. More programs introduced classes to me, useful for any reuse of code. More brought arrays, lists, and arraylists, all of which are essential for programming. More brought the use of threading, which I had already known existed due to prior computer literacy (threading is the execution of multiple code paths concurrently, in an attempt to process code faster). Your logic and extrapolation skills must be very good to be able to do this. To do this, all you do is read the code, top-to-bottom, trying to make sense of each statement and declaration. It's all logic and maths. If you can't do that, then try looking up some guides and tutorials, probably on YouTube or something.

Good luck.