Skip to main content

No class at all

Posted by daniel on January 28, 2005 at 12:23 PM EST

Helping Newbies

If you've worked with newbies, you know the common problems they have when first programming with Java. A compiler tells them that the name of the file containing a public class has to be named a certain way. They are told that Java has no pointers and then they encounter a NullPointerException. But long before any of this, writes Rick Burridge in Also in Java Today , many encounter the following Java newbie problem:

"Hand's up all the people who, when they were first starting with Java, accidentally typed something like: % java SomeApp.class when they really should have been trying to run: % java SomeApp You got back an error message like: Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: SomeApp/class "

Rick and those commenting had some suggested solutions - we should look to eliminate more of the minor obstacles. Dana Nourie's new2java project is in the spotlight this week. This " project helps new and experienced developers get up and running on the Java platform by directing them to useful training resources. The project collects links to code samples, tutorials and quizzes, and provides a place to chat with other developers about problems, solutions, coding techniques and more."

Cocoa applications for Mac OS X are typically written in Objective-C, but they can also be written in Java. A "Cocoa-Java" bridge allows you to call into the Cocoa classes from Java, while still allowing you to use the rest of the J2SE API. In Build an eDoc Reader for Your iPod, Part 3, Matthew Russell uses this combination to use an open-source PDF reader written in Java and tie it in to his otherwise-native Mac application. His article shows both how to use key classes in the bridge and how to use the XCode IDE to set up a Cocoa-Java project.

Two Notes: (1) You have until Monday night to submit your proposals for JavaOne. (2) The projects side of java.net will be down for up to 18 hours on February 2, 2005 for a tools update.

Ted Kosan blogs about a new community coming to java.net in On the edge. In today's Weblogs , he writes "On Monday January 31st a new Embedded Java community will make its appearance on java.net and the community will be co-lead by Dan Johnson and myself. Due to the java.net scheduled maintenance on Feb. 2nd, however, we decided to delay officially announcing the community until after the site was back up."

Chris Adamson considers some Hasty conclusions from a recent Open Office announcement. "OpenOffice.org for Mac OS X will keep its X11 dependency and apparently will never get a native Aqua look. The Java-assisted NeoOffice/J is already part-way there. What's the big picture?"

In Projects and Communities, the jini.org front page is linking to the results of a recent poll seeking input as to preferences for which licenses that respondents preferred Sun and others use. Respondents also had an opportunity to indicate which licenses, if any, were unacceptable, and the responses note important concerns about the various licenses.

Heads up to members of the java.net Linux Community: LinuxWorld is reporting on discussions on the jpackage.org list suggesting that a redistributable JVM packaged as a Linux RPM might be made available soon, perhaps in the next week. Note that this story is extremely speculative in nature!

What about not adding any new components to Swing? In today's Forums the suggestion is "Don't add any new components, [..] instead focus on fixing the thousand and one open Swing bugs. There are just waaaaaaaaaaay too many open Swing bugs that need to be fixed and many of them are pretty important. I'd rather feature-freeze until we get the majority of them cleaned up."

Markf writes about Lightweight Objects, Tuples" saying "http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/vanreeuwijk02adding.html Reading through this, it looks ideal. It's not overly ambitious like Kava, and would fit in well with the existing language."

In today's java.net News Headlines :

Registered users can submit news items for the java.net News Page using our news submission form. All submissions go through an editorial review before being posted to the site. You can also subscribe to thejava.net News RSS feed.

Current and upcoming Java Events :

Registered users can submit event listings for the java.net Events Page using our events submission form. All submissions go through an editorial review before being posted to the site.

Archives and Subscriptions: This blog is delivered weekdays as the Java Today RSS feed. Also, once this page is no longer featured as the front page of java.net it will be archived along with other past issues in the java.net Archive.

Helping Newbies
Blog Links >>