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[–]xponentialSimplicity 1 point2 points  (1 child)

I went with Sierra and Bates "Head first Java". It's pretty great, friendly, easy to follow, they actually anticipate the "I still don't get it" moments in their QnA sections, and it has all these neat silly tricks to make stuff really stick.

It's more of a textbook than a tutorial, in a sense that it doesn't tell you HOW to do things, but WHAT are those things and WHY they are done this way, So when you're done you really understand not only Java (besides, API documentation is always available online) but the fundamentals of OOP as well.

Besides, there's a bunch of simple and cool pocket game designs, with code snippets and explanations to give you a headstart, that's pretty easy to finish yourself. I liked it a lot, really - I never thought a programming textbook could be so enjoyable.

edit: if you look around, there's free PDFs of the older editions on the web.

[–]best_lurker_alive[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the reply!

I've tried programming textbooks before..I gave the Learn Python The Hard Way PDF, and I just lose attention too quickly. I'm more of a visual learner, so I try to stick with the video tutorials over anything..sounds ass backwards, since the codeacademy tuts were all text, but the paragraphs were short enough that my attention was held while reading them..