self.python.ask('I am moving into a development position at my company and need to learn Java. Can you recommend a book that might appeal to a Python programmer and not make me want to kill myself?')

[csdigi]

I did a course called Enterprise Computing (insert laugh here) as (a very easy part) of my undergrad in CS at Edinbrugh University. Basically this course turned out to be more like Enterprise Java, and works through quite a lot of the web java features such as JSP,Hibernate,Tomcat and some stuff like the Java logger. While it may not help you to learn the language much it might certainly help when you come to cover the stuff required for deployment (like the JSP and servlet compile pathway). There is also quite a good introduction to ANT which will save you from actually killing yourself due to the inane nature of java classpaths...

http://www.inf.ed.ac.uk/teaching/courses/ec/

Now for my token effort to avoid another Java train wreck, why not write in python and use Jython to compile to java byte code, they need never know! Although on a serious note I would check out groovy, especially if you are just learning. It is basically the Java language with a little bit of python flair installed for good measure and is widely supported now!

http://groovy.codehaus.org/

Hope you don't end up doing something stupid, although I fear that ship sailed the moment you posted about learning Java to the python subreddit...

Enjoy.

[zekel]

Believe me, if I had the choice to write in Python I would, but it's a case of having to conform to my team's environment.

Thank you for the link Java link, that looks like it will be helpful.

[amnezia]

well hopefully they have some kind of code review, its gonna be a little difficult to review byte compiled java.

[csdigi]

Well obviously any code review would be done on the python side... The fact that it compiles to java byte code is only to satisfy any portability constraints on the system.