I know things in the programming world evolve quickly, thus this question that has been asked repeatedly. For example: Any suggestions on good online courses to learn java quickly?
Is codeacademy.com still the best option for beginners to got to start learning JAVA?
The thread linked above also includes links for FRC specific video training for JAVA. But for the complete novice, is there something other than Codeacademy that we should be looking into?
For now are you ignoring WPILib, making a Romi move, and most of the “advanced” features of Java and you want “Hello World” and minor calculations with a little scanner input and print output? I wouldn’t have a problem with codeacademy.
Oracle tutorials have always been good but get into more depth a little sooner so it takes longer to get through them.
The goal is to take students that have never coded a single line and get the knowledgeable enough to move into WPILib. So, yep, starting off with “Hello world” is really the level we need to begin with.
After they get the basics, we can advance.
Before COVID, we had our own Java tutorial, but then we switched to Codecademy.com . (We tried a bunch of experiments in 2020, with mixed success.) We’re not 100% happy with it, as the progression path seems fairly rigid, and it can be hard to see why an answer isn’t being accepted. We had a few students get stuck on Codecademy and then just stop coming, which is a really bad outcome.
So we still recommend Codecademy for students to look at on their own time, but we tell them that it’s not required, they can do any Java course they like, and they certainly shouldn’t get stuck on it. Sometimes we have them search YouTube for “Java in ten minutes”, just to get them started.
In face-to-face sessions, we concentrate on getting them as quickly as possible to the point where they make the minibot move. That’s when you see their eyes light up and they’re hooked. 
We also weave in group teaching sessions, but it’s hard to keep students synchronised, as they all have their own schedule and it’s self-paced.
We were just discussing how we could weave optional Java lessons into our minibot tutorial so people could read them if they needed them, but the main tutorial doesn’t keep getting longer and longer.
Thank you!
This is exactly the type of recommendation I was hoping for.
Ah YES! These moments are the reason I mentor.
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