Ask HN: Modern Java tutorials?

6 points by OwlHuntr 14 years ago | 3 comments

I have to, unfortunately, plunge into the world of academic Java development. I am wondering if there are any modern Java tutorials akin to _why's ruby or python the hard way. I just don't want to read oracle docs solely.

squidsoup 14 years ago |

In my experience most of the best Java learning resources are books - I got the most out of Joshua Bloch's Effective Java Second Edition which assumes some familiarity with the language. Bruce Eckel's Thinking in Java is an excellent introductory approach, particularly if you're new to OO, but you could probably give it a miss.

I don't know if it would apply to your development situation, but also consider investigating other JVM languages like Clojure and Scala - these two languages probably represent the future of the platform.

ashconnor 14 years ago | |

I own Thinking in Java and it's definitely better than Deitel, Big Java and Java Java Java.

If fact it's not just a great book on Java but on OO programming in general.

The only negative is, at least in the printed book, the code isn't highlighted in anyway. I assume this was done to keep printing costs down. Deitel on the other hand is very nicely printed.

OwlHuntr 14 years ago | |

I'm thinking about using clojure. It compiles to Java byte code, though I think my professors would be quite peeved about reading my code :P sounds perfect.

I'll def give the books a try, though I will dread every line I write. (case sensitive file names? 1 class per file?! fack).