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Java tools and books

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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

#5507 — Java tools and books

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.

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#5512

On Jun 21, 7:37 pm, William Colls <william.co...@rogers.com> wrote:
> 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.

--
Lew

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#5520

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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#5522

On 11-06-22 07:12 AM, Arved Sandstrom wrote:
> 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.

  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]

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#5527

On 6/21/2011 7:37 PM, William Colls wrote:

> 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.

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