So I learned Java in 11th grade from an ap comp sci class. We went up until recursion and I did fairly well in the course. Now I'm a freshmen at community college with a fuckload of free time on my hands (literally like 0 friends, unemployed) just waiting to do my GE's so I can transfer and leave this abysmal shit hole. In the meantime, what's a good way to continue my programming ventures from where I left off? I think the next step was gonna be binary tree, lists, etc. Any suggestions as to where I should start? I'm not gonna take any CS courses at my CC because 1. none of them are accepted for credit in the uni. I want to transfer too, and 2/3 I don't feel like wasting another 300 dollars on classes that I might do poorly in and jeopardize my GPA.
Yes, data structures are definitely the next step if you're already comfortable with the language's syntax.
Udacity.com has great programming courses and they are free if you push the blue "access course materials" button when enrolling. They have all sorts of cs classes from beginner to advanced and they are challenging and you really learn a lot. If you get stuck you can look at the answer. It's great
>>51837016
Google "learn C the hard way " and do it in your spare time. Do it not so much to learn C itself for the sake of learning C, but to give you a view of how a computer works and all the shit that modern langs hide from you (with a cost).
Read up on data structures and which types of problems can be solved by which types efficiently.
Don't concern yourself with the "which language is best" memo here on /g/.
>>51837016
Data structures is your next step. ADTs, LinkedLists, Stacks, Queues, BFS/DFS, and basic computational complexity of the most commonly used sorting algorithms in that order. Stick with Java until you are comfortable with those. Once you know your data structures, you can branch out to either higher level (JS, Python) or lower level (C++, C, Assembly) languages.
>>51837098
do i really have to have a fucking partition and run linux to program in C
>>51837278
Nah dude, I've been wanting to do C for a very long time and barely remember the syntax of java. I'm going to C
Not OP, any book recommendations for data structures?
Don't learn a language. Find something you want to build, and build it. Languages will come as projects do.
>>51837392
No. Mingw ou cygwin on windows.
>>51837392
Just run a virtual machine
Nothing fundamentally wrong with any of the advice ITT so far. But learn how to write unit tests. Learn how to write testable code.
Any autist with enough spare time can write a program that works. What separates the professionals from the basement-dwellers is being able to PROVE that your program works. Testing, preferably run via an automated build system, is that proof.
If you are serious about software development as a career (in Java or whatever other language) you will need to know this.
