Learning Java

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I'm sorry, I just checked this comment and half the crap I wrote just is not there :S. So I'll re-write.
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If you already know python and C++ you are off on a good foot.

There are soo many book for learning Java that your best bet is to go onto Amazon or another site, and search for learning Java books, and see how people have reviewed those books.

on another note TheNewBoston has some quite decent tutorials on Java that you might be interested in.

Also, don't forget that Java is a well Documented Language and oracle have extensive API documentation / tutorials on their site.

http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/

Maybe try going through their trail tutorials and you will pick it up no problem

If books don't do it for you; as you already know C++ which is very similar to Java, it shouldn't be too hard to look through the documentations and self-tutor yourself. If this proves difficult then there are many books and online resources which help very much with the beginner process.

The one book that stands out in my experience of learning java while already having experience in C and C++ was Effective Java by Joshua Bloch.

It is great in the sense that it describes a lot of normal programming challenges and tells you an effective way to do this in java. It also teaches provides a bit more in depth knowledge about OO fundamentals such as the relation between the equals() and the hashcode() methods. It is split up in small items, so it is fairly good as a reference book as well.

On the downside: some of the advice is old-fashioned especially with the advent of dependency injection. On the bright side: as a beginning developer it is probably better to stay away from modern solutions, and focus on the core language for now. So there is not much lost here.

As a second point, I would like to spark your interest for GUI solutions in Java. One of the unique things about a language is what frameworks exist for rendering graphics. Since you are interested in creating games, graphics will come into it at some point. Just to be able to give you actual useful advice in this area, It would be useful to know what kind of games would you like to develop? 2D scrollers? 3D shooters? Turn based browser games? I think you will have more fun if you can practice the language while making your first games, so please let us know your interests.

[size=2]Edit: perfectionist, a sentence did not make sense.

First off, thanks everyone for the advice, and sorry it took me so long to respond to my own post (school is crazy this semester).

Verik
As for what kind of games I am interested in making. Really anything and everything, but 3D for sure just because the gaming industry is where i want to work in the future and if i can start making 3D games while still in school ill get some good experience.

Thanks again for all of yalls advice.

I'm currently learning the basics of java using a site called http://www.codecademy.com.

It may not be a book but its free and is quite helpful.

if u already have some experience with c++ and other languages, u might want to check out "thenewboston" java tutorials on youtube, they were very helpful to me on my transition from c++ my first programming language to java (my second), it doesnt cover advanced stuff, but enough to get you started on java.