Question

1. Write a 1-2-page report on your experience with learning Eclipse. What could be provided that would have made the experience easier?

2. Use the “Hello World” program in Chapter 1 as a reference and write a Perl program with file name of greetings.pl. Your program will display one or two lines to introduce yourself.

3. After you finish the greetings.pl program, run it, and make a print screen image of the result, and paste it to the end of the report you write in Step 1.

Answer 1

My Eclipse Learning

To begin with, lets put straight forward that I have to learn Eclipse not by choice but by circumstance. I am a simple Web Designer playing with codes in HTML, CGI; manipulating images in Photoshop and creating fascinating web pages using DreamWeaver. Now the Office in which I works, is a Web Designing Consultant and takes the Projects related to Web Designing and Web Maintainence of its Client. But that is uptil now. The Office recently recruits a General Manager to manage and drive the entire IT Projects and also expand the business of the Organization in IT Field. Now on taking the helm of the entire IT workforce of the organization, our GM makes it clear that the Company will diversify its business into new domains like Web Applications, Gaming, Mobile Applications, etc. Each of us have been given a choice to align oneself to any of the new business domains. Since I have been an experienced Web Designer, a natural choice that immediately comes to my mind is to go for Web Applications.

Our GM (IT) is a bit alien to Microsoft products. He made it clear to us that all the Web, Games and Mobile Applications need to be created using Java with backend database being of MySQL. Now, it is obvious that I have to learn Java, from basics to advanced. But since I am accustomed to GUI environment, so learning Java all through the Command Line interface appears bit opposite to my programming nature. So, the search begins for the IDE to learn Java. And then someone suggests that the best and simplest IDE for Java is the Eclipse. So, my journey of Eclipse starts, not in dark but for brigther future.

In the context of computing, Eclipse is an integrated development environment (IDE) primarily used for developing Java applications. However, it can also be used for developing applications in other programming languages such as C/C++, Python, PERL, Ruby etc.

The Eclipse platform is composed of plug-ins and is designed to be extensible using additional plug-ins. In fact, Eclipse can be used as an IDE for any programming language for which a plug-in is available. The Java Development Tools (JDT) plug-in allows Eclipse to be used as a Java IDE, C/C++ Development Tools (CDT) is a plug-in that allows Eclipse to develop C/C++ applications, PyDev is a plugin that allows Eclipse to be used as a Python IDE, , the Eclipse Scala plug-in allows Eclipse to be used an IDE in developing applications in Scala and PHPeclipse is a plug-in that allows Eclipse to be used as complete development tool for PHP.

To learn about Eclipse, I enrolled in a Computer Training Institute for Weekend batches. The Institute has well-equipped infrastructure with latest hardware configured Computers which makes compilation and excution really fast without having to wait for long. The Classrooms have Smartboard and all necessary Audio-Visual equipments as necessary for impart training. Our Instructor has extensive knowledge of Eclipse IDE and Java Programming Language. The Study Materials being distributed are well written in simple and lucid language with examples from Real-Life scenarios. The entire syllabus is well structured going from very basics and gradually entering into the complex topics. There are lots of practical exercises to be done at the end of each Chapter. These Practicals are divided into Guided as well as Unguided, with few Complex Practicals for all those over the top learners who are way ahead than rest of us in completing the practicals.

Despite of all the positive traits as mentioned there are few odd ones out too which would have further makes the learning more engaging and fruitful:

• The machines both in the Classroom and Lab should be provided on 1:1 ratio so a learner can learn and practice at his/her own pace and uderstanding. It will also imbibe deeper understanding of he topics in the learner.
• At times jumping from one topic to another is too fast. A best approach would have been to insert a pause, so we can test what was explained before moving to next command.
• The shortcuts commands should be shown on a pop up, because sometimes is difficult to understand and the automatic transcripts did not catch the Commands and Tools names right.
• The course should have spent some time going over the basic structure of how projects are managed within the Eclipse interface.

Overlooking these minor hiccups, overall the Course is both engaging and informative.

Perl Program to Print Self Introduction

greetings.pl

#

# Program in Perl to Introduce Yourself

#

print "Hello All!\n";

print "Myself Andrews Simmons. I belongs to Montreal, Canada. \n";

print "Currently, I am doing Masters in Electrical Engineering from MIT.";

Execution and Output