dmtdev

As of 2008‒12‒20, Google reports 913,000 results for the query “java tutorial”. How many results lead to unique Java tutorials? We can safely assume that thousands of separately‐written Java tutorials are available; if you need any Java tutorial, you’re in luck.

Now, what about your IBM laptop’s broken touchpad? Or on‐the‐fly text generation for text‐based games? Google queries may provide results, but finding relevant information is more difficult.

Here is a question: how many beginning Java books are available at an average bookstore? More importantly, what quantity of selection is necessary? I want choice (an example‐led introduction, an exhaustive and verbose reference, a concise cheat‐sheet) but doubt that that many choices are necessary—I would much rather know how to fix my touchpad. Why is basic knowledge abundant while specifics are so disproportionally sparse? I have guesses (ease of writing, assumptions of uselessness) but prefer to address the situation directly; hence the punchline:

I established this blog to address specific or even obscure issues for desperate others to find after months of searching. My posts enter multiple fields: computer science, software engineering, mathematics, religion, mythology, politics, philosophy, physics, chemistry, and more. In other words, anything I think someone else might want to know. Posts that stray from this philosophy will be filed under the category ramblings.