Question

I’m a new student to programming and taking my first introduction to Java college class. Certain pre-made functions exist in Java such as Math.pow(x, y); or System.out.println(); but how do I know what other ones are available for use? Do you have some way of looking these up in the API documentation that I don’t know? I could browse that data all day and find nothing even close to what I’m trying to accomplish. I wouldn’t even know what package it was in. I understand practice makes perfect, but it would be nice to know if something exists before I attempt to create it from scratch.

Answer 1

Chances are if there’s something you think someone else might want to do, there’s a library around for it – either built into the JDK or as a 3rd party library.

The quickest way for any particular function you’re after is just to Google, and you should find out whether it’s in the JDK or available as a library pretty quickly. If that fails, then (non-duplicate) questions here asking if anyone knows a library with x functionality for Java are fine too.

Eventually, as you say, after a while you’ll build up a pretty extensive knowledge of such common functionality – and that may well come quicker than you think.