Recommended Java for beginners CDs and/or books

can anyone recommended a do-it-yourself learning java book or CD. something i could do on my train trips to and from work. i have a develpment environment on my laptop & java installed.
it would help me in my job & i am interested as well. maye i can score some points with the collegues.

no worries, i'm not intersted in starting a new career. i just like to keep up with technical things.

the book that I used way back when I was learning JAVA was 'Just JAVA 2' by Peter Van Der Linden. I found it to explain everything very well, very organized and could be used somewhat both as a tutorial style read-straight-through or reference book. To the point where 6 years later I can still remember the book well enough to not need to look it up to get the author/title.

good luck, and enjoy,

Amazon link (reviews at bottom):
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/013010534...glance&n=283155

Dont waste your money on a book, java is easy as, just do a couple of tutorials on the net. What do you want to use it for? Applets, Apps or server side?

Why java anyway? Java programs look crap and they use heaps of resources and microsoft has dropped it from windows anyway so its losing popularity and scope for user base pretty quickly.

If you are looking for apps or server side stuff in the windows world check out c# if you are looking to learn coding with an easy to use object oriented language check out something like ruby.

And dont forget the language itself it only about 5% of programming, once you learn a couple of different languages you know them all, if you are going to spend money on books dont waste money on the flavour of the month (in javas case the flavour of last month) language, buy a decent algorithms and data structures book that you can use for all languages.

Lisp based languages are also great to learn to develop a good programming mindset, they arent used so much in the real world but will make you a better coder in any language.

Oh and I used to teach java at uni by the way.

ruby, huh? i just can't apply it to my work though. i write technical documentation for java developers and although i get along pretty well with my limited technical background (i used to do object-oriented data modeling at my old job), i feel i spend way too much time trying to interpet what a developer means than just formulating something. i had a c class at uni and was reminded you can't do everything you set your mind to.

Kza makes it sound like Java is dead.. if you are going to write a Windows app, fair enough, use C#, however Window application programming is really only a very small percentage of the work that is done out there...

Yeah for sure, everything has its little niche. And from a learners point of view the actual languages java and c# are very similar anyway, might have slightly different niches though. You learn one you should feel pretty comfortable working with the other. Elfenstar does sound like she has a pretty good reason to specifically learn java though. Of course once you learn a language you are a long way from being able to actually program anything without learning your environment (libs, operating system, etc) and some basic programming techniques like data structures and algorithms. Its like the difference between playing an instrument and writing music, or knowing how to work a chisel and being able to carve out a sculpture.

I would just do the tutorials at Sun Java Site. Thats how most people I know learned it but they were all C/C++ programmers.

i guess i would like to learn the tidbits without having to go back to university. i plan to practice what i've learned. it could even be fun!

prof. kza, any recommended lesson plans?

@ exile, i know about those tutorials. i'll download them.

As someone mentioned the Just Java book by Peter van Der Linden is very good but I would say, if you have not programmed before you probably want a crappy teach yourself Java in 24hrs type thing first.

Most colleges teach Java so there is always plenty of course notes around on the internet.

not wanting to put you out of a job or anything but isnt it far better/more efficient if the developers do the documentation?

Java does suck indeed. My experience of Java is running across a road with my desktop tower in my hand to demo my project to my tutor at uni as the exact same code didnt work on their machines!

But if you do want to learn it then I would say download a free eBook and have a go that way, helps if you have two monitors as well.

Java *shudder* urgh i would sooner boil my head

yes, but then no one would know how to use the tools. have you ever read documentation written by developers? trust me, you need me.

And im pretty sure the developers appreciate having someone else do at least the end user and manager documentation. For other programmers my code is self documenting

Its gotta be nicer than fuckin windows device drivers, and on days like today, I think would rather enjoy the childs play of java than the nightmare c++ code I am working with now, which is actually makes a great example for why lisp should be the industry standard.