The elements of computing systems

Have started reading (and have in fact completed more than half of) The Elements of Computing Systems. The book is more about learning by doing than learning by reading. I have also been completing all of the software projects as I go through various chapters in the book. It's been a great learning experience and I wish I had something like this during my undergrad days. It's must read for all Computer Science students.

Java and OOP rock!!!

I started off my programming career at i-flex as a Java developer and worked on developing desktop application using Java and the Swings library. Also as a research assistant at Clemson I developed a GUI tool for visualizing and analyzing the performance of parallel programs using Java and Swings. The Object Oriented (OO) style of programming really simplified my tasks while working these two projects. Also the software that came out was very robust and very easily adapted to change. I could concentrate on the task and forget the programming part.

Since more than three years now I have been working on file systems development using C and hardly had a chance to work with Java. However recently I started of using Java (in my spare) for a personal project of mine and am really amazed how advanced and powerful it is with it's

1) OO style
2) Platform independence
3) Super rich class library.

I think it is best language as of today to do mobile (cell phone and PDA) ,desktop, server and may be even distributed application development.