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Re: Java tools and books

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On 11-06-21 11:37 PM, William Colls wrote:
> 
> 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

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Java tools and books William Colls <william.colls@rogers.com> - 2011-06-21 22:37 -0400
  Re: Java tools and books lewbloch <lewbloch@gmail.com> - 2011-06-22 00:49 -0700
  Re: Java tools and books Arved Sandstrom <asandstrom3minus1@eastlink.ca> - 2011-06-22 08:12 -0300
    Re: Java tools and books William Colls <william.colls@rogers.com> - 2011-06-22 09:05 -0400
  Re: Java tools and books markspace <-@.> - 2011-06-22 10:08 -0700

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