Best way to start learning Java.

trentonjeffro · January 11, 2015

I have been teaching myself Java for a while now, and I am decent in programming, and reading Java, but I want to actually "Learn" it. Can someone tell me the best place, be it videos, text, or websites, with tutorials in Java. Thanks!

ManWithBeard1990 · January 11, 2015

Well, there's this

http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/

But the way I did it was like so:

First this tutorial which I really liked. Gets you more familiar with the syntax and stuff

http://profs.etsmtl.ca/mmcguffin/learn/java/

Note that it teaches how to write applets which are slightly different from standalone apps

Next I wanted to do a GUI so I went here

http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/uiswing/index.html

Also, the graphics teaching of the quick and dirty second link is a little outdated now and newer ways of doing it are here:

http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/2d/index.html

And later looked up everything else I ever needed in the first link too.

PutuLips · January 11, 2015

Java is hell to learn from code. It's so convoluted that by the time you get to the good stuff, you're already a few hundred lines down. That makes it difficult to learn from example (which is how I learn). I'd say that the 2nd best way to learn it would be to follow a tutorial series on YouTube on different projects and learn techniques from there.

Nuluvius · January 11, 2015

Some tutorials:

Some courses:

If you haven't done so already you should visit the Ultimate Programming Resource Thread. There's a Java section listing some of these as well as other staple Java resources. Furthermore if you go through that thread you'll find some more Java related stuff that hasn't made it to the front page yet (it's maintenance is being taken over so it should get an update shortly).

IntelliJ is by far the best IDE for Java (IMO) out there, it's done by JetBrains and is built upon their industry leading ReSharper technology.

DevBlox · January 12, 2015

I think you should learn coding practices in general. Like coding standards and so on, try to work with a specified design, you can try to find some well coded opensource projects (best smaller for learning purposes) and read their code, try to figure out why some decisions were made and so on. The thing about learning this is that the knowledge will carry to any other languages you learn, though designs vary, you will figure them out more quickly as you go. The first thing to start on - write beautiful code.

Not a Java article, but a good one nontheless: http://kotaku.com/5975610/the-exceptional-beauty-of-doom-3s-source-code

Well, I hope that replied to your question. You say you are decent at programming and reading Java, so it's time to move on!