When I started to learn java I found it very hard to remember all the methods and ways of doing stuff.
I found that you should concentrate on either applets or applications to start with, as these have totally different ways of doing stuff. This makes everything a LOT easier.
I would start with applications simply because they require less methods and are easier to test. No HTML required!
If you don't need a browser or appleviewer, you are writing Java Application. You can still create GUI in Java Application. You may learn and Java programming in using swing in writing Java Application.
Writing GUI in Java is not easy. You may start with text-based or start with books for wrting GUI in Java.
> I have just begun using applets/gui in class and I
> find them to be much more difficult!
Yeah creating GUIs is a pain, because there are a lot of little pieces that have to be strung out just so, and that's not even counting the business logic.
This is another good reason to keep the UI and the business logic separate. GUIs are hard enough without being intertwingled with the core of the application. Furthermore, in many businesses (and other projects, I presume) the GUI is done by completely different people who work on it full-time, so keeping that layer of separation between them is just logistically useful.
> Are GUIs
> considered applets?
No. However, because applets are embedded into (graphical) browsers and don't have a command-line interface, they always have a GUI.
> I know from the one I am working
> on that they don't have to be run from an html file
> using appletviewer like applets do, so I'm thinking
> they aren't the same thing.
A regular java application (not an applet) can have a GUI as well.
But it doesn't necessarily have to.
A java app that's called from the command line won't need an HTML file to start it.
