I've done projects in the past and hope to continue doing so in the future, but sometimes I have some doubts regarding your advice. I understand that people don't program enough, but when you already code a lot, shouldn't you start looking at other people's code for inspiration and ideas?
Many times in the past I have had an idea and started to program. But sometimes my implementation was far from the best, and there were parts of the code that either "miraculously" worked or were an ugly workaround.
What do people mean when they say that Java holds one's hand too much? Could you give me any examples of that "hand-holding"? I've been learning to program in Java and sometimes I feel like crap thinking that I'm fucking up my learning.