okay, my dad unwittingly gave me a *really* bad newbies' book on java, and as such i am having great difficulty learning the language. what i want to know is: has anyone found a good book/website for a newbie? preferably on that doesnt tell you that "if you don't understand this theory, sont panic: it's very similar to C" and leave it at that.

oh, and if it's a website, you get brownie points if it's free: im too young for a credit card, yet

I think most Java developers would point you towards Sun's java site. (As long as you've had previous programming experiance)

Sun Java Site:
http://java.sun.com/
Tutorials Section:
http://developer.java.sun.com/developer/onlineTraining/
Sun's Java Tutorial:
http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/java/index.html
Essential Java (or you can buy the book):
http://developer.java.sun.com/developer/onlineTraining/Programming/BasicJava1/
http://developer.java.sun.com/developer/onlineTraining/Programming/BasicJava2/

I suggest learning Object-Orientated concepts before jumping into Java.

Also, be sure to download (or add to your bookmarks) the Java API.

http://java.sun.com/apis.html

Personally I prefer a hardback version of the API so I bought a copy of the "Java Developers Almanac" but the online version is more up-to date and contains more detail.

Who's ya daddy? (That probably has no actual relevance here)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0953931013/ref=sr_aps_books_1_2/026-821...

This is a fantastic book, and for once when it says it assumes no previous programming knowledge, it actually means it. It really simplifies eveything for a newbie. I should know, if it wasn't for that book I would have quit programming a long time ago.

Sign up for Sun's Java newsletters [ie, the one for newbies].

Check out the resource links. There's some good book links on there. All of which are free.

- Emmel

thanks, guys... this'll take a while to get through.

i'll let you know how i go

What type of program are you interested in writing?
If an applet, and if you learn from playing with cutting and pasting code, then I took a pathetic one weak class last summer and I could give you some source from a little applet I wrote that loads images and can have them follow paths and such.

If not an applet, then you could be doing much better stuff with your time..

applications, specifically

applets are useless to me cuz i dont have a website

specifically so that you can use swing, or for the cross platform part?

umm... here's the bit where my eyes cross and my head explodes...

I meant,why do you want to use java for application development? Some of the features that java has in that area is how the program will function over many platforms or you might be using java for developing your applications because of the swing class, which is java's own gui (characterized by the easily recognizable ugliness)

I was just asking why you would want to use java for writting applications.

i want to use java for app development, mainly because they're highly recommended by my brothers, but also because if i know java, c should be much easier to learn.

stepping stones...

[edit]stupid keyboard[/edit]

well, okay but I recomend python using the QT libraries. It is pretty easy, but powerful and QT as far as I know works similar to the swing class

thanks :)

"which is java's own gui (characterized by the easily recognizable ugliness) "
What?! You think it's ugly?! I thought it was very nice, better than KDE 2.x and Classic Windows! (^_^)

Java's GUI looks crap, but its very simplistic and easy to learn.

LOL, I still think it looks nice. (^_^)

oh, has anyone used a waykool java and c (and a few others, i think) compiler called codewarrior? i'm starting to use it, and the mind reels at the thousands of options...

but then, at least the mac os x format it uses looks one heel of a lot better than any of the windows ones to date.

http://eclipse.org/ is a very nice Java IDE (Integrate Devolpment Enviroment, a.k.a. fancy text editor :) I never liked Codewarrior, but I haven't used it very much.

I used a old version of CodeWarrior on my mac (although it was new when I bought it :). I kinda liked it, and I'd guess current versions have all the fancy stuff other IDE's got...

Haven't heard anything about windows versions of it though; nobody seems to use it.

At school we write our java programs/applets in notepad :p And compile them using the standard commandline stuff shipped with the JDK. Slow business, especially debugging.