Maximum PC

ok so i have i decided to try and start learning java. what would be a good book to teach me how.

Great question!

I highly recommend the 'Thinking in X' series of books by Bruce Eckel for a variety of reasons.

First and most importantly, they are well written and well organised for the beginning programmer. They teach a language and programming at the same time; this is a rare feat for programming texts.

Second, the author offers the older editions for free download in HTML form from his website. I recommend the electronic editions and encourage people to buy one or two of his current texts if you enjoy and / or benefit from the free versions.

Main Free Download Page
Current Editions (for $)

There are two texts of interest for this thread: Thinking in Java and Thinking in C++. Either is a great beginnger's text ... choose the language you'd like to learn, download a copy of this text, and start learning.

Adding to Jips commet, I found the Thinking in Java book to be a great book for the language -- paticularly for IO, OOP and the Java Collections API. Keeping in mind that the Java platform is pretty huge, I would also recommend the following resources...

1) Intro to Java

It's really hard to beat the Sun Java Tutorials. Some of them are a bit dated, but it often helps to know a bit of the history.

http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/

2) Best Practices

Effective Java by Joshua Bloch is a great book covering how and why you should adopt certain idioms / practicies. You can find it on Google Books.

3) Swing Library

For creating Swing apps, I've always found the documentation on Sun's website coupled with the documentation for whatever tool I am using to be adequate (usually NetBeans).

4) Java Enterprise Edition (JEE)

Again, the Sun JEE tutorial is the probably the single best resource. As far as I can tell, most of the JEE books are based primarily on this material with maybe some information for other app servers.

I just found an old resource for c++ learning.

Learn C++ in 21 days!!

http://newdata.box.sk/bx/c/

You should burn it and read this instead...

Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years

I have read many of the posts attached to this thread. One of the things I have not seen mentioned and it NEEDS to be mentioned because you asked a specific question:

The first language that you should learn is your native tongue. I am not being facitious here. Mastering the native tongue of the requirements writer, be it English, Spanish or Navajo is an absolute must. If you have difficulty with the languages involved you may make a critical mistake and not know it until release or later. This can get quite expensive quite quickly.

The second language that needs to be learned is the language of numbers. Mathematics and its connection to most types of programming becomes immediately obvious when you start working with the nuts and bolts of a language. All computer languages must provide the following abilities: Some way of defining or declaring variables. Some way to branch logic (If Then...Else and switch() case:) come to mind. Some way to assign values. Some way to iterate through a known list of objects. some way to move to a different address block. All of these operations involve mathematics. If you can not do simple algebraic functions like
f(x)=x^2+2y-5 you are not going to understand what the languages operators are doing behind the scenes.

The third language you need to learn is much more sublime than the first two. This is the language of Logic. Particularly That branch of logic known as switch or gate logic. This language is basically a set of deterministic phrases with the operators being AND OR XOR NAND NOT and NULL Knowing these elements and exactly what they mean will allow you to interpret a given programming languages avatar's for these low level logic gates and or their symbolisms. Exclamation(!) being a logical NOT in some languages and so forth.

Once these languages are mastered Then is it time to choose a programming language to learn with. At first keep it simple start with a Command Language or a Batch Language that has readily recognizable systems and key words that translate to known operations. REM for remark and Echo to print to a screen come to mind from DOS Batch programming days. Then with that under your belt start with a language that is going to be useful to you in some manner. Java/C# for the person who wants to write powerful nitpicking detail multifunctional applications. ASP.NET/Coldfusion for budding Web Developers. SQL-92 compliant languages for the budding DBA or DBD. C++/Ansi C for the hardcore gotta-save-a-byte-and-a-half-where-i-can-developer-so-i-can-embed-my- app-on-an-Atom-netbook programmer. JCL/IBM 390 for the Mainframer (VSM and IMS a must here). RPG/COBOL for the business reports person and FORTRAN for the Scientist who still uses a slid rule to compute velocities along a curved path.

But only delve in to the actual programming languages out there when you have satisfactorily mastered the first three languages

-MaxFan

I'm willing to bet $10 that MaxFan is either currently in college or within a year of having graduated.

Yes?

Not that I disagree with anything you wrote ... you're quite correct.

I never talked like that when in school

You owe the rest of us $10 per, Jip. I saw the end of my college days in the spring of 1995 after 2 years of thesis research for my Phd in theo phys. That following 4 years of phys undergrad and 2 years of grad work on a MS in theo phys and comp sci from UNCC (the Phd came from Duke) I currently work at a multinational banking conglomorate and have for the past 2 years. Prior to that I was a consultant in the comp sci and programming fields with specialties in c#, C++, C, Java, perl, MySQL, MS SQL, Oracle T-SQL and sad to say Visual Basic ("shudder" but it is what the customer wanted so I learned it)

Damn it!

Welcome to our little folder, MaxFan ... sounds like you'll be a great addition.

Thank you Jip. High praise indeed!

also agree with all maxfan said, but would like to add that one other thing you need is ideas. i only code as a hobby, and with no one telling me what to code, i often find myself finishing a project, only to realize i have no clue what to code next. knowing 15 different programing languages does you no good if you cant think of a way to use them.

i started programing two years ago, learned java. i also agree that you need math skills. however, as a hobbyist, is found all that i needed to get started was a decent book on java, 8th grade algebra, and a logical mind. if you are still having trouble with your 9th grade geometry proofs, you are probably going to find programing rather dificult. if you have those things, programing can be looked at as verry structured english, or spanish, or whatever you use.

If you have completed HTML next you can start to learn about PHP, mysql, C++ and java.

I know this is a necropost, but...

HTML is not a programming language! Everything you learn in HTML is completely and utterly useless for programming.