which java book?

Read the reviews on Amazon.com

Quote:

Original post by Shakedown Read the reviews on Amazon.com

Agreed... This is the beginner java books, and you'll get more feedback in their reviews than you will get here.

Plus, if you search the forums here you'll probably find that this question has been asked and answered many times.

For what its worth, this one looks like a good start. I would recommend some of the ones I used, but it has been so long that they appear to be gone.

Head First Java is quite nice. The approach in the book is quite refreshing when it comes to teaching programming languages. This is finally something different than the traditional 'boring' programming books.

The java book I learned from was Java:All in one desk reference for dummies.
Expesive, but good.

The Savitch book is okay; the Lewis/Loftus book is not very good. Neither of those are particularly good books, however.

You would be best off with the Core Java books by Horstmann and Cornell. They're staggeringly well-constructed and will effectively demonstrate good programming practices (something that most programming books do not do well). The first book in the series is the necessary fundamentals for not making an idiot of yourself while programming, while the second book is a very in-depth examination of more difficult and esoteric Java features.