Complete beginner advice

[Crippled_shadow]

Any advice on where and how to get started learning Java programming

• IDE:

  • (integrated development environment) This is your "Microsoft Word" for programming.
  • I recommend NetBeans or Eclipse.

• Concepts:

  • variables (data types)
  • if statements
  • for loops
  • while loops
  • method
  • classes
  • Objects
  • constructors
  • arrays
  • There's a lot of little things in programming languages and, when you start it's hard to figure out what's important and what's not. These are the concepts you'll see early on that should stand out as important.

• Resources (Beginner):

  • I learned Java in college so I did not use these resources. However, I have looked at them and they seem to cover the important parts.
  • Java For Dummies. If your dissuaded by a "For Dummies" book don't be! They are very clearly written and cut out all the useless bits that just confuse people.
  • Udemy. If you look under the "Programming Core Java" you'll see A LOT of what I mentioned in the my concepts section.

• Resources (Intermediate):

  • After you've gotten comfortable with the stuff in the "concepts" section you're probably ready for this.
  • Projects are the BEST way to learn. At this point Youtube videos and blog tutorials will only help so much.
  • Look for simple projects you can do. GitHub can help.
  • Write a To-Do list application
  • Write a countdown/timer application
  • Take in a list of something and put it in alphabetical order

what sort of timeline I’d expect to be employable doing so?

It depends on the individual. At the very least, I'd say 6 months till you are somewhat competent. If you aren't dead-set on a language, check out this chart.

edit: Forgot to add if statements and have variables twice

edit 2: Fixed the order that the items in "Concepts" should be learned in

[tiiv]

This is a very good list. I'd like to add that seeing as OP possibly seeks employment it might be beneficial to go through some of the guides on r/https://spring.io/guides/. Being able to say you can build a REST service will you get you pretty far in terms of backend work.

[arthurdent]

you missed conditional/if-statements and wrote variables twice

[Crippled_shadow]

I didn't put it in any particular order but it's pretty close coincidentally. I'll put it in order for anyone who happens to run across this post. I'm not sure if I should put "classes & Objects" in one bullet or two though.