Thread: where to start

Mid, pm me your msn (if you have one) and I will help you get started.

Actually, the ideal place to start learning anything for free would be Google; the results are seldom irrelevant, but, as forks has kindly linked, the Oracle tutorials would be a good place to start despite them being written to bore the living daylights out of anyone who has even the smallest light of happiness inside them. Needless to say, they're not very enthusiastic but they are informative and good if you don't care about niceties. I, myself, am one of those people where informality in a book cheeses me off if it's forced, so the Oracle tutorials and documentation are really good for me.

Book-wise, I've heard from many good sources that the Effective Java book by Joshua Bloch is a great book but perhaps not much of a starting point, however, it is complimented nicely by Head First Java by Kathy Sierra and Bert Bates which is highly regarded as a good point for beginners and actually comes from the same people as Head First Design Patterns, which is a palatial book that's not strictly related to Java but is very good for teaching you about software design and architecture and is a must buy for when you're good at Java and you're looking into more advanced programming concepts.

And another option could be to not learn Java first, and instead learn a smaller and easier language like Python, and later on move on to Java when you've nailed all the beginner concepts down. If I was in your position, I'd probably take this route as you'll end up proficient with more languages and you'll have a good foundation for learning in the future.

The Oracle tutorials may not be the best place to start if you have absolutely no experience in programming. As others have stated, use Google to looks for a few noob-friendly tutorials until you get comfortable with the basics of the language. It doesn't matter if they're mediocre. Just read something to get familiar with the language and the terminology. Write a few programs as well a long the way. Then maybe quickly look through Oracle's tutorials to rinse your knowledge.

If you want to get into good habits, read Effective Java as functor suggested.

Originally Posted by Aaron

I seriously wonder why you even posted this

Reported

I laughed that you clicked that

It's quite obvious he just wanted a few good resources to learn from. A question like this is perfectly fine.

Your attempts to troll, on the other hand...

Originally Posted by iKilem

The Oracle tutorials may not be the best place to start if you have absolutely no experience in programming. As others have stated, use Google to looks for a few noob-friendly tutorials until you get comfortable with the basics of the language. It doesn't matter if they're mediocre. Just read something to get familiar with the language and the terminology. Write a few programs as well a long the way. Then maybe quickly look through Oracle's tutorials to rinse your knowledge.

If you want to get into good habits, read Effective Java as functor suggested.



It's quite obvious he just wanted a few good resources to learn from. A question like this is perfectly fine.

Your attempts to troll, on the other hand...

If [Only registered and activated users can see links. ] isn't a good starting point then.. well.. I honestly don't know what is. That tutorial seems to cover most of the basics in a simple, coherent manner; I don't see why people would have too many problems starting out from it if they're not bothered by the formal tone.

Originally Posted by functor

If [Only registered and activated users can see links. ] isn't a good starting point then.. well.. I honestly don't know what is. That tutorial seems to cover most of the basics in a simple, coherent manner; I don't see why people would have too many problems starting out from it if they're not bothered by the formal tone.

What you linked me to only gets you familiar with java source files and class files. It doesn't even touch on the language.

Originally Posted by iKilem

What you linked me to only gets you familiar with java source files and class files. It doesn't even touch on the language.

It's a starting point and an introduction, if you'd taken the time to click Next a few more times then you'd have discovered that the tutorial leads on to talk about aspects like variables (In [Only registered and activated users can see links. ]) and classes [Only registered and activated users can see links. ], which is exactly what a beginner wants.