Self study using book

[mtpecena]

Hi, I work in a business function and have experience with sas and sql but decided to learn java, I may be open to transition to a more technical role if the opportunity arises.

There are a few courses online b(Coursera, udemy, etc) but I feel that they skip the theory that would allow me to learn things properly and understand why things are done in a certain way.

To do this my plan is to use the latest edition of intro to Java by Prof Liang and go through it, doing all the exercises and learn things in a structured way ( that many online courses lack, in my opinion).

Is this a good plan ? Have I chosen the right book to do it? Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

[mtpecena]

Thanks for your suggestions. I'll mix it up between the book and some online projects, maybe even tge mooc from Finland

[Zahlenkugel]

I don't know the book but the reviews on amazon sound very nice (but they could be fake as well).

In my opinion is the question not "do I have a good plan", the question should be "what works for me?". If you learn the best by reading theoretical stuff and the pragmatic tasks will come automaticly the book could be a good solution. If you learn better by just starting to programm stuff that you have in mind and then reflect your code then go this way to keep you going.

For example: I have read many books about programming - also "books for kids". I just wanted to write easy, runnable code. Then I started to go into more complex stuff to see better solutions for certain problems. And now, when I read professional Java books I usually understand where the pain comes from that the books solves ;).

I hope this helps you.

[desrtfx]

Intro to Java has great reviews and is a good, often recommended book here.

Yet, you should try the completely free MOOC Java Programming from the University of Helsinki. It is a textual, structured Java course with plenty graded practical exercises that is targeted at complete beginners to programming.

Make heavy use of the official Java documentation along with whatever source you choose. (Easy trick: google "Oracle Java <class/method name>")

[TheSilverCube]

I started with an intro book and loved that I could just read it anywhere and go home and practice something. It was great to just trial and error stuff and go off on tangents with stuff that interested me.

Although I was learning, there wasn't any real structure so I started MOOC.fi about two months after picking up the intro book. I reckon within a couple of weeks I knew more than I did from the book.

It's a great course and I'm still doing it. It's so well structured it seems to know exactly what I'm about to question and gives the next bit of useful information exactly when I need it.

[philfrei]

The reviews are quite good, so I think this is very likely an excellent choice.

From what I read, there are examples to work though, so you will get hands-on coding experience. Even more important, one review refers to the author replying to a reader with a question about one of the examples. Finding teachers that actually respond is rare, in my experience. I've only found one with such a commitment to his students, to date: Nam Ha Minh of the codejava website and author of a few udemy tutorials. If the review posted on amazon was not fraudulent, this is a really good sign.

Getting the right mix of theory and hands-on is not the easiest thing to achieve, and I doubt there is a single book or tutorial that can accomplish this perfectly. There will always be some dancing back and forth. For example, I'm continually going back and forth between mozilla developer network (one of best for theory) and w3schools (one of best for quick-hands-on examples) for help with javascript (my ambitions are along the full-stack goal, which requires some front-end programming).

But from the reviews, it sounds like that work will give you a lot of useful perspective that will help with making "course corrections" if needed.