Finished with Java, what next?

I just finished my advanced Java programming course. Now that I have learned Java I want to take my programming knowledge and over the next weeks:

1. Learn C
Currently using Ritchie and Kernighan’s The C Programming Language as my text but so far in chapter 1 I’m not happy with the book because it seems to be presupposing too much of a lack of knowledge about prior programming experience. It’s introduction of aspects of C is not as systematic as I would like but seems written more like a narrative that’s trying to explain a story about programming using the C language. At this point I’d rather have a more methodical, system run-through of the components of the language.

2. Learn C++
Am using Bjarne Stroustrup’s A Tour of C++ and am also planning to look at several other recommended texts.

3. Because of a project I’m working on I decided to spend some time learning how to create GUI desktop programs with Python and so have some books on Tkinter.

4. Am reading another book called Practical Network Automation which is about using Python and Ansible for managing networks. Am doing this as an exploration just to investigate what this field is like. This also involves setting up GNS3 for doing simulations.

5. I just found out about Dropwizard and decided to investigate it also just as an exploration. There are so many different technologies and things seem to be changing so fast, so I’m just picking some things to check out.

6. Working on reconfiguring my home server which I was planning on running Linux containers in a Windows host. Have been working on configuring Hyper-V and virtual network configuration for security (using private internal network with a manual host-to-net route to wall off the server from my home network). But now I’m considering running pre-packaged appliances to do what I want to. A completely different approach. If I do use several appliances then I will need to look into a system to direct requests between different appliances.

7. Want to keep studying Kotlin and plan to create some apps with it. Have decided to focus on Kotlin from now on instead of Android.

8. Want to work through some study materials for Chef since it seems to be in popular use now.

Finally, the title is kind of a misnomer because I’m definitely not “finished” with Java but only beginning. Learned a lot of amazing things this past semester and definitely want to work on more things like concurrent programming and creating my own network services.