coldDeath

Hey, I want to get a book that teaches Java, I looked in the book reviews section and there weren't any reviewed so I thought I'd ask here.

If anyone has read a book about Java that they have found to be useful and up-to-date please tell me. I would like a book that goes quite advanced but also covers basics. But I already know the theory of basic stuff liek control statements, so I wouldn't want the first 10 chapters to be about that sort of stuff. Maybe a book with exersices and a language reference would be good.

Well if anyone knows of a good book - please recommend it - thanks

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Random Spirit

I have three books to recommended. Two are free to download form the authors web site. The third is a book that costs about £35.

Bruce Eckel's Thinking in java is a very good read and you can download it for free form his web site or buy it in the shops as a hard copy. It dives in at the deep end with object oriented programming. It mostly covers J2SE 1.4 but does have some information on J2SE 1.5 at the end.

There is also Java Notes 4 by David J. Eck. Its probably the best book i have read for a complete novice to programming. It is free to download in various formats and can be read online. It is aimed at first year computer science students and was recommended by my university as a intro java book. Its teaches Java 1.4 which means it is also modern. I dont think it has anything on Java 1.5 features such as generics, enhanced for loop, covariant return types and enums, that is not really a disadvantage as you can find many qiuck guides for java 1.5 new features online. Here is a link to it:

http://math.hws.edu/javanotes/

The third is Beginning Java 2 JDK 5 Edition by Ivor Horton. ISBN: 0-7645-6874-4. He is a very good author. His book takes you from beginning java right through to swing, xml and data access. It is a wrox book and i have yet to find a bad book published by them. If you want to spend some money on a book then this is what i would recommend.

If you want a Java reference then you could buy this book:

http://www.sun.com/books/catalog/Gosling_JLS.xml

I have not read it so i cant say if its any good. Its probably not what you want if you are learning java. So i wont recommend it.

ReggaetonKing

I say that "Core Java 2 7th Edition" is a very very excellent book to learn Java, especially coming from C++ or just beginning programming. There are two volumes to this series. It only spends a chapter or two learning about basic control flow and decisions. It gets to the good stuff early! That is why I love this book so much. I think every Java programmer should have this book or at least read it.

Volume 1 teaches you a lot of the basics along with some GUI, Events, I/O, and other important utility classes:
* Generic programming, restrictions and limitations, type bounds, wilcard types, and generic reflection
* Swing GUI development, including input validation and other enhancements
* Exception handling and debugging, including chained exceptions, stack frames, assertions, and logging
* Streams and files, the new I/O API, memory-mapped files, file locking, and character set encoders/decoders
* Regular expressions using the powerful java.util.regex package
* Inner classes, reflection, and dynamic proxies
* Application packaging and the Preferences API

I read this entire book and want to get Volume 2 myself, but I need to save money for another car so I can wait. Here's the link to Core Java 2: Volume 1.

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I would love to change the world, but they won't give me the source code!

coldDeath

Thanks for you replies.

I've downloaded Java Notes and TIJ and will start to read through them soon.

As good as they may be, I prefer to read on paper as it is easier on my eyes and i can take it wherever I want. So I'm getting a book aswell. I checked out both of your suggestions; Unofrtunately Random Spirits suggestion was on the high end of my budget (at £35) and the customer reviews said i was a bad book. Also I checked out kings suggestion but it was £40, but the reviews were a little better.

In the end I settled for Learning Java because it had great reviews, it is published by O'reilly, it was only £20 and it seems to cover a lot.

Thanks again.

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Random Spirit

Glad i could help.

Programming books(as with most textbooks) tend to be quite expensive. I spent about £180 on books last year for university. It will probably be the same again next year too.

Have fun learning java

AntiNinja

I've got the "Sams teach yourself Java 2 in 21 Days" good stuff, jam-packed with examples, and covers most Java features.

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ReggaetonKing

I heard a lot of good things about "Thinking in Java". Have fun!

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I would love to change the world, but they won't give me the source code!

peace_of_mind

An update on Java Notes: the first half of Java Notes 5 is available on the site provided by Random Spirit int post 2. It's quite introductory, as was stated, so it probably wouldn't do you too much good at this point, CD, but a beginner skimming this thread might find that useful.

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paulchwd

Java in 60 minutes a day also BIG java is ok

andro

"Java How To Program" 6th edition by Deitel and Deitel is pretty good...

It covers J2SE 5.0, and a huge range of topics.