

Ask HN: Best Java programming book for the Beginner - johnrdavisjr

I am going to school in the fall and my intro to CS class will be teaching us Java. I was wondering if anyone could recommend a good beginners book, but not one of those "for dummies" books as I find them useless. Thanks!
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squidsoup
I got the most value from Effective Java by Joshua Bloch when learning Java.
It's not specifically for beginners, but teaches best practice that would
encourage a beginner in the right direction from the start. I suspect there
are many instructional Java books that would teach coding practices that would
not be considered best practice today.

<http://java.sun.com/docs/books/effective/>

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dstein
It's unfortunate that colleges and universities collude with textbook
publishers to ensure that they use a different textbook/edition each year that
can only be bought at the university bookstore. Really you should be able to
find out exactly which textbook your course will be using and obtain a copy
beforehand.

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johnrdavisjr
I just checked the book store and they recommend:

JAVA PROGRAMMING:FROM PROB.ANAL... By MALIK Edition 5TH 12 Publisher: CENGAGE
L ISBN: 9781111530532

I appreciate everyone's recommendations, I am still willing to try out
everyone's suggestions.

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bartonfink
Your CS class will likely recommend a book for you, but my wife used Lewis and
Loftus when she took an intro to CS course to get a better handle on what the
hell I did with my life. She found it relatively easy to learn from.

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benkant
Savitch's Absolute Java is reasonable, if a bit expensive.

I found it a tad verbose and slow, but there's many worse. There's a joke in
there somewhere.

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nextparadigms
Check out thenewboston's java tutorials on youtube or go to his site at
thenewboston.com

You can also try out Head First Java book.

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trollhammeren
I started with "Java:Complete reference" but it's definitely not for
beginners. It covers a wide array of stuff though

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ashconnor
Thinking in Java by Bruce Eckel.

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geekytenny
Java from the Ground-up

