Is "Well Grounded Java Developer" a good book for someone moving from C# development?

[Nick Hird]

I am somewhat new to Java, especially Java 7. I am a C# developer by trade (at the moment). I was thinking of going to Java route and was looking for some material that's not so basic yet not so advanced. To get things going so to speak. Do you have any suggestions on books/websites that can get me in the right direction? Is the "Well Grounded Java Developer" book a good fit for what i am trying to do?
Thanks,
--Nick

[Ben Evans]

d4rkl0tu5 wrote:I am somewhat new to Java, especially Java 7. I am a C# developer by trade (at the moment). I was thinking of going to Java route and was looking for some material that's not so basic yet not so advanced. To get things going so to speak. Do you have any suggestions on books/websites that can get me in the right direction? Is the "Well Grounded Java Developer" book a good fit for what i am trying to do?
Thanks,
--Nick

Hi Nick,

The Well-Grounded Java Developer was written to be a second book for Java developers - so I would start by reading something a little more introductory - a lot of people like Head First Java by Bert Bates & Kathy Sierra and then come back to The Well-Grounded Java Developer when you've finished Head First (and maybe pick up a copy of Josh Bloch's Effective Java as well).

Ben

[Nick Hird]

Ben Evans wrote:
Hi Nick,

The Well-Grounded Java Developer was written to be a second book for Java developers - so I would start by reading something a little more introductory - a lot of people like Head First Java by Bert Bates & Kathy Sierra and then come back to The Well-Grounded Java Developer when you've finished Head First (and maybe pick up a copy of Josh Bloch's Effective Java as well).

Ben

Thanks! I will look into a more introductory book and then circle back to this one.
--Nick

[Campbell Ritchie]

Two excellent books suggested there. Actually, there is great similarity between Java and C#, so you would find the transition reasonably easy either way. As long as you can understand object‑oriented programming, that is.
Things which you will find hard include

true primitives, eight types of them, and you cannot call toString on an int.

No properties as you know them.

Inner classes instead of delegates.

Generics clunky.

And most Java developers, at least when starting out, learn to execute programs at the command line rather than using IDEs like Visual Studio,

[Ben Evans]

Campbell Ritchie wrote:Two excellent books suggested there. Actually, there is great similarity between Java and C#, so you would find the transition reasonably easy either way. As long as you can understand object‑oriented programming, that is.
Things which you will find hard include

true primitives, eight types of them, and you cannot call toString on an int.

No properties as you know them.

Inner classes instead of delegates.

Generics clunky.

And most Java developers, at least when starting out, learn to execute programs at the command line rather than using IDEs like Visual Studio,

Some other things to think about. - a link to a Stack Overflow answer I provided for developers coming from C++ - it might be useful too.