Author: al2meta

Astralmeta.com is an old website I created way back in 2013. See the screenshot above (courtesy of Archive.org’s Wayback Machine). It started as blogspot site (called blog sites back in the days), which was eventually transferred to a hosting service running on a WordPress-powered website. Back then, I don’t know any programming. I was merely editing Blogger’s XML Template to design the blog site and I know the design was not too shabby, but I couldn’t say it’s that pretty good either although I could boast that the site is 100% W3C compliant. Back then, being a 100% W3C compliant web designer is already something. You are a bloody perfectionist! But nowadays, it’s meh. There are now a lot of very skilled and talented individuals out there who can do the same and more, and with that comes innovation, aside from massive competition of course.

I envisioned the site Astralmeta to be a community website aiming to connect people and encourage them to share their stuff with others and at the same time encourage them to help one another, building a network of sorts. Of course, nothing can be more disappointing than having that vision dashed. Thanks to social media giants such as Facebook and Twitter. There’s also StackOverflow which is overflowing with web developers, there is Reddit acting like a huge forum, and other sites that are well established and have gone ahead of me. Sadly, this idea of mine could have worked back in the 90s, when nobody had thought about it before. Nowadays, such an idea is obsolete. People no longer need sites like mine.

So what’s the point of bringing it back? Well, I have other visions. If it can’t work as a community, I’m simply going to turn it into a web resource site to host mine and my friends work. Who knows? Maybe someday, it would attract other people and encourage them to do the same. My site could help them promote their work too… well, that is assuming my traffic goes up as it can give them more audience. Currently, I’m redesigning and reprogramming my site from scratch. I’m not relying on any existing theme and I am refraining from using so many plugins. This way, I have better control and understanding of what is going on in my website, particularly on the SEO side. I plan the website to be more user friendly, with a quick login and some social media integration. Having learned JavaScript, I could also implement some cool special effects. Oh, there is one thing I would like to add in the list… SCSS. It’s something I am trying to understand right now. Once understood, I could apply it in the website too.

The theme will remain as spiritual and mysterious as it was before. Having religious symbols and names, and some mysticism embedded in it. You’ll never know, they are in my code.

Sometimes, I don’t understand myself nor do I know what I really wanted. Though it may sound crazy, I seem to be not contented with learning just one or two program languages. I want to learn them all. So far, I got some huge PHP experience with my recent job-related projects as a Junior PHP Developer. In that project, I created a CMS, I created numerous tools that helped us analyze our inventory better. I created checkers that help us determine which items we are selling are discontinued, and most of these, I did it all by myself. I helped our development team fix some problems in our local system. I worked on a WordPress site, I modified the Theme and its Plugin to fit the client’s demand for a custom Real Estate site. From this, I got some experience with actual Web Development, and learned some new HTML and CSS techniques. Thanks to my fellow colleagues who were so generous to teach me, and to our Manager, who’s very understanding.

Aside from the PHP projects, I also created my own simple JavaScript projects. About 2 months ago, I started studying JavaScript language, focusing more on animations, and with the latest having to do with Slideshows. But my ambition doesn’t seem to end there. I am still not happy with my little achievements. To be honest, despite all of my efforts, I still feel unappreciated. People still look at me with less value. I feel like I’m not even your average Joe. Maybe, it’s just me, but I seldom get any praise for my efforts. Well, it’s kind of sad, but what can I do? I’m in New York. To shine here, you really must be extraordinary. Anyway, I am not stopping here, I want to continue and keep on pushing myself to learn more and become even better.

So lately, I am thinking about learning a new language, this time — Java. Actually, this may not be new to me at all. I started studying this language about two years ago. It’s just that I wasn’t persistent to pursue it back then though I created a simple calculator with it.

So what is Java?

Java, not to be confuse with JavaScript, is a programming language and computing platform first released by Sun Microsystems in 1995. Yep, it’s one of the old and classic programming languages out there. A lot of companies rely on this programming language ranging from banks to firms. It is also the language use to create game consoles and game apps, most notably for mobile phones. You can find Java everywhere, in laptops, datacenters, cell fones, and even in scientific supercomputers.

Installing Eclipse and JDK

The first thing we need to have is an editor. There are some several editors available out there but in my case, I’d prefer Eclipse. Eclipse is an integrated development environment (IDE) used in computer programming, and is the most widely used Java IDE. What the hell is an IDE btw? An IDE is a software application that provides comprehensive facilities to computer programmers for software development. It is normally consists of a source code editor, build automation tools, and a debugger. Eclipse, not only contains a source code editor, it also has the necessary compiler and interpreter. Meaning, you can test your source code inside Eclipse itself, without having to compile it into a program and run it as an executable. This IDE also contains a base workspace and extensible plug-in system for customizing the environment.

Now, also note that Java won’t work without the JDK, short for Java Development Kit. This kit contains all the libraries needed to compile and run your source code. Without it, your computer won’t be able to understand code. Think of it as your interpreter. If you are missing some essential JDK components, you can download it here.

My First Java Program

At the moment, I’m still watching a Java tutorial video. Surprisingly, Java is different from PHP and JavaScript that I learned so far. The structure is mostly Object-Oriented and it seems that it needs some additional declarations before you can actually run the code. Not like in PHP, that all you need is a web server environment and you can simple type echo to type a text or in JavaScript where all you need is a web browser and a simple document.write function. Java seems to be using a Java Virtual Machine and a Just-in-Time compiler for my computer to run the code. While most of the execution is handled by Java’s library, the proper declaration like public static void main and identifying if it’s a string argument has to be made before you can call the function System.out.println to type a text just like what I did below.