Good JAVA book

HI.
I was looking at books on JAVA today - so many I got "option paralysis".
Can anyone recomend a good learning JAVA book?
(to use with unity).
I have some experience of MEL.
I know a little about classes, objects and methods. I may not be the most mathmatical bunny around.

Thanks.
Tog

 

Hi Togril,

are you sure you want a Java-book? Unity supports JavaScript, C# and Boo, but not Java... We've had a thread not too long ago on the forums discussing ways to learn OO programming - there were a few tutorials linked.

I guess you should easily find that by searching java tutorial (yeah, we did discuss Java there, too - to learn the concepts, but you can't use the language itself in Unity, and since there's also good C# tutorials out there, I would no longer recommened going the Java route... unless you have a lot of time ;-) ).

Sunny regards,
Jashan

 

Head First: Java is a great book and helps to understand the concepts of ideas worlds faster than with most "technical" books

 

there you go: Java/javaScript!..I'll check out the HeadFirst book.
Basically I am trying to work out the best Language to learn, your right: not a lot of time.
I want to be able to learn something that is usable in other apps specific to gaming / interactive.
Thanks.

Tog.

 

... still java != javascript.

From quirksmode:

 

if i would suggest something, i would say to learn first OOP; since whatever language you want to use is the same, in the conceptual view, if is a OO language

once that you get the concepts of variable, constant, array, matrix, functions, decision making logic and loops, you are basically ready to learn easily from any book; otherwise if you are a starter of OOP it will be harder to learn concepts and programming language.

You can find for free a lot of good material to begin with; then the best chioice would be a visit to your local library and visit the computer science section, where you will find a lot of old books and choose the one that you prefer (seriously, is a matter of preferences, and how you can understand, since a good book for someone is a bad book for another one because not everybody is the same and learn in the same way); the languages are the same since when they were invented, so the newer edition does not always have more knowledge

Another good resource is the online libraries or sites like lynda.com and vtc.com, where you can find video tutorials about javascript at affordable price (something like 60 or 70 dollars), or you can get a subscription and watch the videos online and spend less than 30 dollars a month.

the choices are many hope that my post give some hints instead of confusing lol

 

If you have about "Head First Addition" is the best book for whole JAVA because in that book whole JAVA's concepts are clearly mentioned...

 

Nah. I've got that book. While being entertaining I'd not recommend it on it's own.

The thing I can most highly recommend is going in iTunes and downloading the Programming Basic Course from the Stanford university. That guy rocks and he's in my book the best Programming teacher I've ever seen (sorry if any of my Profs might read this). ^^
And - hey: did I mention the course is free?

THEN you can go for "Head first: Java" again.



Still a word of warning - just in case it was lost on this thread: JAVA and JAVA SCRIPT are two entirely different languages. Java won't get you far in Unity!!!!! The concepts of OO - yes. The language itself: hell, no!

 

That's why i love to say that is better to learn C#; just in case that you wanna learn a programming language that works also outside Unity (XNA, Visual studio, etc); or even C++....the video tutorials from 3dbuzz are amazingly good and cheap.

I went to a course at the UCSC, that was a java course for programmers of other languages, and was very good; but if you gotta start from scratch, the OOP concepts and the basics of the programming language are the same for almost all the modern languages, so any basic book will do the job

 

Yes I highly recommend this as well. They are on youtube as well as itunes.

 

take a look at the itunesU section...is full of material

 

Is that the actual title of the course? I took a quick look and couldn't find it. Is the instructor Jerry Cain? He's on something called Programming Paradigms, but that already assumes knowledge of C.

 

I'm sorry. The correct name is "Programing Methodology" and the name of the Professor is 'Mehran Sahami'. Next time I'll write something I'll look it up first, promise

 

Hi Togril....

If you really want to learn java means J2ME, J2SE and j2EE only one book is enough for that the book is "Head First Edition"...

 

You just need one nobody knows all of them; or should i say that nobody "knows" how to program in all 3 at a high level

Then once that you feel confident, go to the SUN site and check the certifications; they are cheap and is a good thing for your career too (if you plan to use Java somewhere else of course)

 

Thinking in Java is a comprehensive guide to the Java programming language, written by the Bruce Eckel author of the hugely successful Thinking in C++ series. This is an amazing book, not only for its content but also its distribution.