Lily's Learning Code

New York City artist  Nathan Sawaya   exhibited the following art piece of Lego art.  I guess everyone knows to how to connect, manipulate lego pieces.  But only artists like Nathan Sawaya can make such art from the ordinary lego bricks.   We study software development by learning programming languages, tools, methods, ways of thinking, etc.  These topics are normally covered in computing-related curricula.  We also know that experiences are very important ingredient to master programming.  Exactly how all of them work together to upgrade software developers?  What is the journey by which a programmer can reach the mastery of programming or coding and produce art pieces of software?   

I found this cute picture of Ward Cunningham and Kent Beck on the Web http://nosolosoftware.com/beck-and-cunningham/ The post is in some other language I don't understand.  Somehow I like this picture which inspires me to think pair programming, XP, software development, social activity, etc.

I was reading another book about developing applications with UML and  object oriented programming languages.   Somehow I happened to do a quick reading of  Object Thinking .  Immediately I got hooked.   I always want to know more about how to thinking Object-Oriented and how to develop application focusing on objects that behavior.  This book shows some promise.  I was fully engaged so far.  I especially love the "Behind the Quotes" feature.  So far, I list two of my favorite quotes: "Thinking include a value system, a history, a worldview, a set of ideas, and a context." "XP provides a foundation by identifying a set of discrete practices that can actually be practice.  Any developer can actually do these practices and, simply by doing them, become a better practitioner." So, how can a developer get upgraded?   I am searching and learning.  

I am learning JavaFX, which is intended to replace Java SWING as the standard GUI library.   The new Java 8 SDK includes the Java Running Environment (JRE) plus tools to develop, develop, and monitor Java application.  The SDK is  available at  Oracle's Java SE download site.     The SDK includes JavaFX in its distribution.   Well, I downloaded the new Java SE 8 package, which has JavaFX included!  I am done for this part. I am excited to try the new features of JavaFX due to the painful experiences of using SWING to build GUIs.   According to  Oracle's JavaFX documentation , there are quite a few key features available from JavaFX including Java API, scene builder, web view, SWING interoperability, self-contained application deployment model, etc.  I will try the features during this spring.   To facilitate building JavaFX projects, I'd like to extend the JavaFX plug-in to my favorite Eclipse IDE.  I am using Eclipse Luna this time.  To support building JavaFX projec