Advise book

[Dora Di Donato]

Hi guys,
A good book about java?
I am reading "effective java" book - Boch... IT is good book?

Thanks
Di Donato

[Ngml Bishop]

i'v seen countless number of people study this book and it is adviced so often. so yes i think that's a good one
i'm studying "Pearson Absolute Java 5th Edition by Walter Savitch" which is completely satisfactory.

[Campbell Ritchie]

Yes, that is a good book, But it is not a beginner's book, nor is it intended for somebody learning Java®.
Go through our books pages.

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

Dora Di Donato wrote: I am reading "effective java" book - Boch... IT is good book?

Yes, it is a good book. In fact we are discussing it this month in the Bunkhouse Lounge.

As far as recommending another "good book", what are your goals? What do you want to learn? Java 8? Design patterns? Databases? Testing?

[Hussein Baghdadi]

Dora Di Donato wrote:Hi guys,
A good book about java?
I am reading "effective java" book - Boch... IT is good book?

Thanks
Di Donato

Well, depends..
Do you already know Java programming language or not?
"Effective Java" is definitely the book to read if you are going to do any serious Java development but it is not intended to be a tutorial about Java language.

[Dora Di Donato]

I know already java but i want to improve ...it, so i need read a good book.I think for me is better to read about design pattern.

Thanks
Di Donato

[Jesper de Jong]

"Effective Java" is a great book if you already have some experience with Java and you want to learn about good practices and common pitfalls. So, if you already know Java, as you are saying, and you want to improve, then I highly recommend "Effective Java".

[Winston Gutkowski]

Dora Di Donato wrote:I think for me is better to read about design pattern.

I disagree. Design patterns are for people who are quite advanced, and they are NOT Java-based, so you often have a bit of translation to do. The other thing is that they tend to result in "thinking in patterns" which can be magic, can be tragic. I've seen plenty of code where someone obviously decided "Hey, I'll use the Factory pattern" when there really wasn't any need to, resulting in a ten dollar class when a two-bit one would have done just as well.

Design patterns are for after you've read (and digested, and used some of the stuff in) Effective Java. And I'll echo the others here: It is, bar none, the best "why to" book I've ever read about ANY language; and why Josh Bloch doesn't have a stack of Jolts in his cupboard for it I don't know (it won one, in 2002).

Winston

[swetha charan]

Effective Java is the great book, but if you are newbie you can go with other books like "Beginning Java 2 SDK" by Ivor Horton , "Learning Java" by Patrick Niemeyer, Jonathan Knudsen.
These 2 books are really helpful for you to understand java in detail.

[Winston Gutkowski]

swetha charan wrote:but if you are newbie you can go with other books like "Beginning Java 2 SDK" by Ivor Horton...

Thanks for those swetha.

And welcome to javaRanch!

Winston

[Campbell Ritchie]

The only editions of the Horton book I could find on Amazon were for the 1.4JDK, which I think is too old.

[Ron McLeod]

Campbell Ritchie wrote:The only editions of the Horton book I could find on Amazon were for the 1.4JDK, which I think is too old.

This is Horton's latest Java book: Ivor Horton's Beginning Java - Java 7 Edition edition (September 27, 2011)

[Campbell Ritchie]

That is more like it! I still didn't find it earlier. I must have looked in the wrong place.