As a new programmer, the task of taking up a language may sound daunting. I can remember believing that a programmer was somebody who was incredibly smart, doing a very dificult job, and spending every second he/she could typing 1s and 0s into a computer. With this image, it seems overwhelming for anyone. Fortunately, programming today is bassically all in plain english, and is fairly easy. Just make sure to follow general syntax rules, and try and make things look good enough that anyone reviewing your code can read it: the simpler, the better.

Now you might be thinking that even if it is not in the archaic 1s and 0s, that programming still sounds hard. Whatever was meant by "syntax" may sound tedious, but it really is all in english. In fact, in order to learn, you do not need to know very much about computers at all! All you need to do is plug in a keyboard, turn on the monitor, and download and install and IDE. (Eclipse has instructions on their page, if that proves to be a challenge)

If you are new to programming or Java, click here for the introductory tutorial. Otherwise, you can select where you would like to begin from the left, or go to the reference page for a quick reference of the material covered.