Java tools and books

[William Colls]

I am just getting into the java world, and I am looking to mine the
collected wisdom of the group for some suggestions.

1. Are there any reference books that you would consider essential. I
have O'Rielly's Java in a nutshell(4th edition). This only goes as far
as v 1.4. Is worth getting a newer edition? I also have Sam's "Teach
yourself Java 2 in 21 days" which uses SDK 1.5. Not going to get the
newer edition. I have looked at/read some of/bookmarked the tutorial
pages on the Oracle site. I know there are lots more online references.
So any other books/sites/resources that you would consider as essential
to the beginner?

2 Tools for working with Java. I am currently working with NetBeans IDE
6.8. I am aware of ant and tomcat, but not intimately familiar with
either of them. I have used eclipse as a developmnet environment in the
past, but not for java, and it was a limited, and short exposure. So
what tools/IDE's should I be getting (at least) familiar with?

Thank you for your time and thoughtful answers. I recognize that the
above questions a somewhat in the "how long is a piece of string"
question category, but hopefully I can get some feel for the things I
need to be looking at/for.

Again, Thanks for your time.

 

[lewbloch]

I am just getting into the java world, and I am looking to mine the
collected wisdom of the group for some suggestions.

1. Are there any reference books that you would consider essential. I
have O'Rielly's Java in a nutshell(4th edition). This only goes as far
as v 1.4. Is worth getting a newer edition? I also have Sam's "Teach
yourself Java 2 in 21 days" which uses SDK 1.5. Not going to get the
newer edition. I have looked at/read some of/bookmarked the tutorial
pages on the Oracle site. I know there are lots more online references.
So any other books/sites/resources that you would consider as essential
to the beginner?

2 Tools for working with Java. I am currently working with NetBeans IDE
6.8. I am aware of ant and tomcat, but not intimately familiar with
either of them. I have used eclipse as a developmnet environment in the
past, but not for java, and it was a limited, and short exposure. So
what tools/IDE's should I be getting (at least) familiar with?

Thank you for your time and thoughtful answers. I recognize that the
above questions a somewhat in the "how long is a piece of string"
question category, but hopefully I can get some feel for the things I
need to be looking at/for.

Again, Thanks for your time.

Absolutely read Joshua Bloch's /Effective Java/, 2nd edition.
http://java.sun.com/docs/books/effective/

after reading the Java tutorials, of course.

IBM Developerworks has tons of great Java articles.
https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/

Read anything written by Joshua Bloch, Brian Goetz, Doug Lea.

That's just to get going.

 

[Arved Sandstrom]

I am just getting into the java world, and I am looking to mine the
collected wisdom of the group for some suggestions.

What world are you leaving? There's a set of suggestions for complete
novice programmers, and a similar but not identical set of suggestions
for folks who are already experienced with other languages.

1. Are there any reference books that you would consider essential. I
have O'Rielly's Java in a nutshell(4th edition). This only goes as far
as v 1.4. Is worth getting a newer edition? I also have Sam's "Teach
yourself Java 2 in 21 days" which uses SDK 1.5. Not going to get the
newer edition. I have looked at/read some of/bookmarked the tutorial
pages on the Oracle site. I know there are lots more online references.
So any other books/sites/resources that you would consider as essential
to the beginner?

I'll second Lew's suggestion to get a copy of Effective Java by Bloch.
This is the kind of book that you'll use more and more as you progress;
it's not essential as you work through the tutorial track though.

As you work through the tutorial track start getting familiar with the
API javadocs. These are ultimately your main references.

2 Tools for working with Java. I am currently working with NetBeans IDE
6.8. I am aware of ant and tomcat, but not intimately familiar with
either of them. I have used eclipse as a developmnet environment in the
past, but not for java, and it was a limited, and short exposure. So
what tools/IDE's should I be getting (at least) familiar with?

A recent NetBeans is fine, so is a recent Eclipse or IntelliJ IDEA. I'd
recommend also that you practise command line for at least the basic
"javac", "java" and "jar" tools.

I feel compelled to point out that while Ant may be considered to be a
tool it's perhaps better viewed as a build _system_, like others such as
Maven or Apache Ivy. Tomcat isn't a tool, it's an application, and just
so happens to be an application that runs other applications: i.e. an
application server.

Thank you for your time and thoughtful answers. I recognize that the
above questions a somewhat in the "how long is a piece of string"
question category, but hopefully I can get some feel for the things I
need to be looking at/for.

Again, Thanks for your time.

AHS

 

[William Colls]

What world are you leaving? There's a set of suggestions for complete
novice programmers, and a similar but not identical set of suggestions
for folks who are already experienced with other languages.

I have been programming for the last 25 years. I started with
assembler language on early micro-processors (8088, 8086, z80, 8051
etc). then some Business Basic. for the last 15 years or so, almost
exclusively with Progress RDMS and its associated Advanced Business
Language. So mostly traditional procedural orient languages. The big
change for me is the move to OO.

[SNIP]

 

[markspace]

1. Are there any reference books that you would consider essential. I
have O'Rielly's Java in a nutshell(4th edition). This only goes as far
as v 1.4. Is worth getting a newer edition?

I'd definitely recommend getting a more recent source for Java, 1.4 is
ancient. Besides sources already mentioned, I recommend Learning Java,
by O'Reilly. It's decent teaching aid and it has enough material to use
as a reference for a good long while. Make sure to get the most up to
date version, which is 3rd iirc.

For tools, get either NetBeans or Eclipse. Eventually learn the other.

Ant is like the Unix tool "make", it automates builds from the command
line. Learn it eventually, but it's kinda confusing if you're brand
new. The IDEs will last you for a bit.

Tomcat is something else entirely. Effectively it's a big bunch of
libraries and a framework for doing websites (and that's not quite
right: it's a "container," which means it calls you, you don't call it.
Mostly.). Not recommending to pick up right away. Learn plain Java
first. Do web programming only if you know you need to.