Java developers

Hello. My name is Erica, and I'm a senior Computer Science major at West Virginia Wesleyan College. I need some help getting started on the research for my senior project this semester, and I thought this would be a good place to ask for suggestions.

( My senior project ideaCollapse )

As I'm sure most of you know, finding "credible sources" is all-important in writing a research paper. My professor simply told me that the information I need is "out there," so I'm having trouble figuring out where to start. Any websites or textbooks or articles or anything you can think of that relates to the ideas I described above would be greatly appreciated.

Also, if any of you know of another community here on LJ or elsewhere on the Internet that might be able to help me, please let me know.

Thanks so much,
Erica

(Crossposted to algorithms)

Since we've been on the topic of teaching styles and so on, I thought I'd post (read: bitch about) what happened to me the other day.

I'm currently covering JSP, JDOM and XML in my Server Side Programming class; I don't really get it, and I was way behind (but that's not the issue here.. I mostly think i just need to spend a few hours with the API docs now..).

I showed up to class the other day to find that no one else is there. "Sweet!" I think to myself; "I can have my lecturers undivided attention and really get this stuff sorted out." .. I proceed to sit down with her and she basically gives me all the answers to the excersises without explaining anything. Any questions are answered with something along the lines of "We'll cover that in a minute; Just type this." or a direct quote from the worksheet she's looking at (which may or may not be relevant to the question i've asked) .. So now I could probably write basic XML creating programs via cut & paste, but I wouldn't know wtf I was doing.

And then she tells me that:

Example 1:
<code>
Element anElement = new Element("rootElement");
anElement.addContent(new Element("childElement").addContent("Content"));
</code>

Is exactly the same as:

Example 2:
<code>
Element anElement = new Element("rootElement");
Element anotherElement = new Element("childElement");
anotherElement.addContent("Content");
anElement.addContent(andotherElement);
</code>

(Excuse mistakes, this is typed from memory..)

Now, somebody _PLEASE_ correct me if I'm wrong, (her unshakeable insistance that she's right has me wondering  about my own understanding of the code) but those statement blocks are not exactly the same. They'll have the same result in the document tree (won't they?), but programmatically the result will be quite different.

Right?

And on another note, regardless of who's correct about that;

How on earth should I deal with this woman who is supposed to be an educator, but totally fails to answer any question I have?

Hi! I'm doing a project for my management of information systems class. My professor wants me to validate a date using the method "matches()."

Update:
I got the code to work! Yay. I was playing around with the parentethes and \\/ like someone suggested. Here's the new code:
( Read more...Collapse )