Roger Brinkley's Blog

The way cool relative

Generally I try to keep things simple at this point. I said I was the JavaDesktop Community Leader and the lead engineer on JavaHelp. After a few more questions he asked, "Do you have any Java T-shirts?". As it turned out I had a couple of Java.Net and JavaHelp T-shirts.

As I gathered the shirts he starting asking more and more questions. At one point he asked if I could teach him Java. While I declined, I did tell him that if he was interested he should learn because the Advanced Placement test for Computer Programs was now based on Java instead of C++. We talked a little more about the differences between Java and C++ and other advantages Java has over C++. I also pointed him to the java.net Games Community since that is where his, and probably every other 17 year old developer, interest was.

After a quick tour of the Games Community and the Java3D project he turned to his dad and said, "Dad, you never told me we had any way cool relatives!".

Everyone laughed but I have to admit it's pretty satisfying to know that the work you're doing is viewed by a 17 year old as making you the "way cool relative".

Comments

• Hey, I learned Java at 16, and at 17 I started a project on java.net. :-) (I'm 18 now...) No, it's not in the Java games community. Actually, it's in the Java tools community:

  http://noexceptions.dev.java.net

  BTW, I need more people testing it. :-) It's an exception-handling library that saves you from having to write elaborate catch clauses in Java programs. One of the design goals is to keep the API simple enough that a good Java programmer should be able to download it and be productive with it within ten minutes, and be able to fully use all the APIs within thirty or fourty-five minutes. Plus, it's LGPL, so if you don't trust code written by an eighteen-year-old, you can fix it up yourself. :-)

  Sorry, I think I've completely hijacked the topic here. Anyway, don't be too quick to discount the programming abilities of a seventeen-year-old. If he (or she!) has enough energy and determination, he can build all kinds of things (and not just games!).

  Posted by: afishionado on December 08, 2004 at 12:24 PM

• Well, you are the only way cool relative..
  And we decided to use Torque instead of Java.. because we don't know what we're doing..
  I'm still looking at Java, and it really does make more sense than C++, but I don't think Torque will let us use Java.
  We have some other things, and I'm most likely going to use Java for that.

  Posted by: korin43 on March 28, 2005 at 09:08 PM

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