Getting Started : Java Glossary

go to home page G words local find full screen, hide local find menu Google search web for more information on this topic jump to foot of page translate this page with Babelfish punctuation 0-9 A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z (all) ©1996-2009 2008-03-26 Roedy Green, Canadian Mind Products
Getting Started
You may be just getting started with Java after thoroughly learning some other computer language, or you make just be starting from scratch. Here are some hints to help you come up to speed as quickly as possible.
Programming In Java Beginner Books
Finding Roedy’s Recommended Books Links
Selecting Books

Learning to Program In Java

I think you should learn the various Java technologies is this order: applications, FileIO, AWT, Applets, Swing, Collections, Enumerations, Generics, Java Web Start, Threads, SQL/JDBC, Servlets, MIDP. Save XML, Java EE, JSP, Hibernate… for later. How do you get started in java? here are the suggested steps.
  1. Download and install the JDK.
  2. Use regedit to check that the registry entries at My Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Javasoft look plausible. They can get screwed up if you uninstall or install more than one Java run time.
  3. Print yourself a copy of the Java Cheat Sheet.
  4. Collect all the Documentation that is absolutely essential.
  5. Write the HelloWorld application and get it going. HelloWorld, javac.exe, java.exe, and CLASSPATH.
  6. Applet entry.
  7. tutorials, and read up on how to write Java code.
  8. At least peruse the FAQs — the frequently asked questions. FAQ is often a misnomer. These things are usually littered with esoterica and answers to questions no one ever asked, all without any sense of priority or categorisation. The Java glossary you are now reading is a type of FAQ, organised as a glossary.
  9. the gotchas section of the Java & Internet Glossary to warn you about the common pitfalls. Even if you just skim it now, it will save you months of frustration, because when you hit a gotcha, in the back of your mind you will remember it, and you can go back to read up on the details.
  10. the error messages section of the Java & Internet Glossary to explain what the various compiler and run time error messages separate page for compile time error messages and for the run time error messages.
  11. Bone up how you are expected to behave in newsgroups. Post your beginner questions to comp.lang.java.help . Do not cross post them to the more advanced topics such as comp.lang.java.machine  and comp.lang.java.programmer . Before you post, check the Java & Internet Glossary and the Java FAQs Frequently Asked Questions. People will be quite rude if you ask a question already answered in one of the FAQs. They have not the time to wade through material covered a hundred times before.
  12. If you are an experienced programmer, just coming up to speed on Java then try the Sun Forums on Java,
  13. Personal Bookshelf. It will point you to places you can read text books free online, particularly Thinking in Java .
  14. Visit a computer bookstore and pick yourself a fat textbook on Java that tackles problems of interest to you at an appropriate difficulty level. It is better to browse in a real bookstore that to buy online. See book stores to buy books online and the bookstore comparison shoppers to find out where you can get the books you want most cheaply.
  15. Read the events essay.
  16. Check out IDE to consider an Integrated Development Environment, particularly a source debugger and class browser.
  17. Study other people’s source code, e.g. mine. Make simple modifications to the programs. Make progressively more drastic modifications until you understand how the programs work. Then you can write your own. Try peppering them with System.out. println or use your IDE’s debugger to trace them to help understand what they are up to.
  18. Check out collections of source code to see how other people solve various Java problems.
  19. To learn how to interconvert the basic Java types play with the Conversion Amanuensis. Doing the I/O with the Java conversion classes is a bit like memorising the irregular French verbs. You need a tutor — the Amanuensis. This includes converting back and forth between numeric Strings and internal binary formats.
  20. To learn the Byzantine Java I/O classes, play with the File IO Amanuensis asking it to generate you source code for all manner of combinations of data and file type. Doing I/O with the Java classes is a bit like constructing a car out of Lego blocks. You need the Amanuensis to show you the ropes. Read the binary formats, endian, println formats and primitives entries.
  21. Just reading will get you nowhere. You have to read, then apply what you read, alternating read then do. Give yourself a real project that has some emotional appeal for you. If you can’t think of anything, the list of student projects.
  22. Read How To Write Unmaintainable Code and carefully avoid following its advice.
  23. Check out the Newbie essay to see if you are falling into the common bad habits most newbies pick up.
  24. Check out the section on dealing with tough homework problems. It is useful for tackling tough problems generally.
  25. To deal with feelings of panic and overwhelm, read the tharn entry.
  26. I have written all kinds of Java applications and Applets with free source you can look at. Pick one that interests you. Download the source, study it, then start playing with it, making simple modifications, e.g. changing colours and fonts, changing the text labels. Then work up to more major changes, adding buttons, changing the layout… You almost never write an application completely from scratch. You find something vaguely similar and step by step hammer it into the new shape. The advantage you have something working to play with at each stage. In these early experiments, you don’t need to plan ahead. Imagine you are potter edging your metaphorical electronic clay a little closer at a time to what you want.
  27. Write some applications.
  28. Write some Applets.
  29. Write some Java Web Start applications.
  30. Tackle SQL/JDBC.
  31. Tackle Servlets.
  32. Tackle MIDP (cell phones and handhelds).
  33. Tackle a Servlet framework such as JSP.
  34. Tackle JavaMail.
  35. Tackle JCE encryption.
  36. Tackle Hibernate
  37. Tackle EE.

Finding Roedy’s Recommended Books

If you have Google Desktop installed and if you are reading a local mirror copy of my website provided via the Replicator, you can do a Google desktop search with: filetype:html "recommend book", (note the exact-search quotes) and Google Desktop will find you my book referrals sprinkled throughout the mindprod.com site, about whatever other search criteria you add. Note the spelling of recommend — one c, two ms, not reccommend or recomend or reccommend. You have to spell it exactly in the form of a command: "recommend book", not "recommend books" or "recommended book" or "recommend a book".

This feature will also kick in later using an ordinary web browser Google.com site search with site:mindprod.com "recommend book" for people who browse the ordinary way, when Google next indexes the mindprod.com website.

Incidentally, Google Desktop will let you find anything else on the mindprod.com website with indexes that are only seconds out of date.

You can similarly find my DVD recommendations with filetype:html "recommend DVD" in Google Desktop and site:mindprod.com "recommend book" in an ordinary web browser Google site search.

You can also use Google Books to search for books, and browse them online to various degrees. You can also use or Copernic, which I find generally faster and more reliable that Google Desktop. Just search for recommend book without quotes. You might optionally set the filetype to html to narrow the search.

Selecting Books

Don’t buy a book just because others, even me, said it was good. Read as much of it as you can before you buy to make sure it is not too basic or too advanced. A book utterly the best for others, may be too advanced for you, for now. It won’t get any more comprehensible once you take it home, and it will just languish on the shelf.

If you possibly can, go to a brick and mortar bookstore and browse the books. Watch out for:

Look for: I like O’Reilly books. They tend to be deep, narrowly focussed on a specific topic, slim and accurate. I am not impressed by the fat fluffy books from Que.
One of my brick and mortar bookstore tests for a book is to read the first few and the last few pages. The first few pages should assume only things I already know, and be easy to read. The last few pages should assume significantly more knowledge than I have, and be somewhere between difficult and impossible to read. This test eliminates both books that are completely beyond me, and books that teach nothing I don’t already know.
~ Patricia Shanahan

Beginner Books

book cover recommend book⇒Head First Java, Second Edition
 paperback
ISBN13:978-0-596-00920-5impressioncounter
publisher:O’Reilly recommended
published:2005-02-09
by:Bert Bates, Kathy Sierra
A beginners’ book that not only has the depth it’s also an entertaining and thought-provoking read. If you have no computer programming experience at all, this is the best starting place.
UK flag abe books.co.uk abe books.ca Canadian flag
UK flag amazon.co.uk. amazon.ca. Canadian flag
German flag abe books.de chapters.indigo.ca. Canadian flag
German flag amazon.de. abe books.com American flag
French flag abe books.fr amazon.com. American flag
French flag amazon.fr. barnes and noble.com American flag
Italian flag abe books.it powells.com American flag
Spanish flag iberlibro.com sony e-books American flag
Australian flag abe books anz download o’reilly safari American flag

book cover recommend book⇒Just Java 2, Sixth Edition
 paperback
ISBN13:978-0-13-148211-1impressioncounter
publisher:Prentice Hall
published:2004-07-01
by:Peter van der Linden
Covers Java 5 aka 1.5. Peter has a sense of humour and breaks the drudgery of reading with a funny story at the end of each chapter. He explains through simple examples. This is a book you can sit down and read and not fall asleep. I helped edit and proofread the chapters on enums and genericity. This is good introduction that won’t overwhelm you.
UK flag abe books.co.uk abe books.ca Canadian flag
UK flag amazon.co.uk. amazon.ca. Canadian flag
German flag abe books.de chapters.indigo.ca. Canadian flag
German flag amazon.de. abe books.com American flag
French flag abe books.fr amazon.com. American flag
French flag amazon.fr. barnes and noble.com American flag
Italian flag abe books.it powells.com American flag
Spanish flag iberlibro.com sony e-books American flag
Australian flag abe books anz

book cover recommend book⇒Java: How to Program
 paperback
ISBN13:978-0-13-012507-1impressioncounter
publisher:Prentice Hall
published:1999-12-15
by:Paul J. Deitel, Harvey M. Deitel
It is 1355 pages, with lots of examples and a broad coverage of Java-related topics. It covers JDK 1.2.
UK flag abe books.co.uk abe books.ca Canadian flag
UK flag amazon.co.uk. amazon.ca. Canadian flag
German flag abe books.de chapters.indigo.ca. Canadian flag
German flag amazon.de. abe books.com American flag
French flag abe books.fr amazon.com. American flag
French flag amazon.fr. barnes and noble.com American flag
Italian flag abe books.it powells.com American flag
Spanish flag iberlibro.com sony e-books American flag
Australian flag abe books anz

book cover recommend book⇒Java: An Introduction to Computer Science & Programming (2nd Edition)
 paperback
ISBN13:978-0-13-031697-4impressioncounter
publisher:Prentice Hall
published:2000-12-15
by:Walter J. Savitch
Good for beginners to computer programming.
UK flag abe books.co.uk abe books.ca Canadian flag
UK flag amazon.co.uk. amazon.ca. Canadian flag
German flag abe books.de chapters.indigo.ca. Canadian flag
German flag amazon.de. abe books.com American flag
French flag abe books.fr amazon.com. American flag
French flag amazon.fr. barnes and noble.com American flag
Italian flag abe books.it powells.com American flag
Spanish flag iberlibro.com sony e-books American flag
Australian flag abe books anz

book cover recommend book⇒Core Java 2, Volume I: Fundamentals (6th Edition)
 paperbackkindle
ISBN13:978-0-13-047177-2impressioncounterB000OZ0N44clickcounter
publisher:Prentice Hall
published:2002-08-22
by:Cay Horstmann and Gary Cornell
Covers JDK 1.4 such as regular expressions, New I/O, assertions, Preferences, Swing enhancements and logging. Aimed at someone who already knows C++. This is not a fluffy introductory book.
UK flag abe books.co.uk abe books.ca Canadian flag
UK flag amazon.co.uk. amazon.ca. Canadian flag
German flag abe books.de chapters.indigo.ca. Canadian flag
German flag amazon.de. abe books.com American flag
French flag abe books.fr amazon.com. American flag
French flag amazon.fr. barnes and noble.com American flag
Italian flag abe books.it powells.com American flag
Spanish flag iberlibro.com sony e-books American flag
Australian flag abe books anz

book cover recommend book⇒Core Web Programming, Second Edition
 paperback
ISBN13:978-0-13-089793-0impressioncounter
publisher:Prentice Hall
published:2001-06-03
by:Marty Hall and Gary Cornell
1250 pages. This is a great doorstop of a book. It has a few chapters on client-server programming in Java, and a section of that is on CGI. I have looked at hundreds of Java books and found nothing that deals in depth with client side Java talking to CGI, except Marty’s book. It is really very simple and he does an excellent job of explaining it. Marty has posted all the source code examples from the book for anyone to use. These contain updates and errata fixes you don’t get on the CD-ROM that comes with the book.
UK flag abe books.co.uk abe books.ca Canadian flag
UK flag amazon.co.uk. amazon.ca. Canadian flag
German flag abe books.de chapters.indigo.ca. Canadian flag
German flag amazon.de. abe books.com American flag
French flag abe books.fr amazon.com. American flag
French flag amazon.fr. barnes and noble.com American flag
Italian flag abe books.it powells.com American flag
Spanish flag iberlibro.com sony e-books American flag
Australian flag abe books anz

book cover recommend book⇒Java Precisely
 paperback
ISBN13:978-0-262-69325-7impressioncounter
publisher:The MIT Press
published:2005-08-01
by:Peter Sestoft
If you already know other languages and don’t want a fluffy beginner’s book this may be for you. It concisely and completely covers Java in 100 pages.
UK flag abe books.co.uk abe books.ca Canadian flag
UK flag amazon.co.uk. amazon.ca. Canadian flag
German flag abe books.de chapters.indigo.ca. Canadian flag
German flag amazon.de. abe books.com American flag
French flag abe books.fr amazon.com. American flag
French flag amazon.fr. barnes and noble.com American flag
Italian flag abe books.it powells.com American flag
Spanish flag iberlibro.com sony e-books American flag
Australian flag abe books anz

book cover recommend book⇒Introduction to Java Programming: Fundamentals First, Sixth Edition
 paperback
ISBN13:978-0-13-223738-3impressioncounter
publisher:Prentice Hall
published:2006-07-21
by:Y. Daniel Liang
Liang is a university professor, so this is written (and priced) as a university first year level text book. It covers the new features of Java 1.5. You can check out the book on the author’s website.
UK flag abe books.co.uk abe books.ca Canadian flag
UK flag amazon.co.uk. amazon.ca. Canadian flag
German flag abe books.de chapters.indigo.ca. Canadian flag
German flag amazon.de. abe books.com American flag
French flag abe books.fr amazon.com. American flag
French flag amazon.fr. barnes and noble.com American flag
Italian flag abe books.it powells.com American flag
Spanish flag iberlibro.com sony e-books American flag
Australian flag abe books anz

book cover recommend book⇒Introduction to Java Programming: Comprehensive Edition, Sixth Edition
 paperback
ISBN13:978-0-13-222158-0impressioncounter
publisher:Prentice Hall
published:2006-07-22
by:Y. Daniel Liang
Liang is a university professor, so this is written (and priced) as a university level text book. It presumes you already know the basics. It covers the new features of Java 1.5. You can check out the book on the author’s website.
UK flag abe books.co.uk abe books.ca Canadian flag
UK flag amazon.co.uk. amazon.ca. Canadian flag
German flag abe books.de chapters.indigo.ca. Canadian flag
German flag amazon.de. abe books.com American flag
French flag abe books.fr amazon.com. American flag
French flag amazon.fr. barnes and noble.com American flag
Italian flag abe books.it powells.com American flag
Spanish flag iberlibro.com sony e-books American flag
Australian flag abe books anz

book cover recommend book⇒A Programmer’s Guide to Java Certification: A Comprehensive Primer, Second Edition
 paperback
ISBN13:978-0-201-72828-6impressioncounter
publisher:Addison-Wesley
published:2003-08-14
by:by Khalid Mughal and Rolf Rasmussen
Khalid Mughal is a professor at the University of Bergen in Norway. This book is to help you pass the Sun Certified Programmer for Java 2 Platform 1.4 exam, but it is also useful for gaining a deeper understanding of Java. Mughal has a terse clear way of writing.
UK flag abe books.co.uk abe books.ca Canadian flag
UK flag amazon.co.uk. amazon.ca. Canadian flag
German flag abe books.de chapters.indigo.ca. Canadian flag
German flag amazon.de. abe books.com American flag
French flag abe books.fr amazon.com. American flag
French flag amazon.fr. barnes and noble.com American flag
Italian flag abe books.it powells.com American flag
Spanish flag iberlibro.com sony e-books American flag
Australian flag abe books anz

book cover recommend book⇒Java Actually: A First Course in Programming
 paperback
ISBN13:978-1-84480-418-4impressioncounter
publisher:Int. Thomson Business Press
published:2007-01-31
by:by Khalid Mughal, Torill Hamre and Rolf Rasmussen
Khalid Mughal is a professor at the University of Bergen in Norway. This is book suitable for a first course in computer science that presumes no prior knowledge, but a bright mind. Mughal has a terse clear way of writing.
UK flag abe books.co.uk abe books.ca Canadian flag
UK flag amazon.co.uk. amazon.ca. Canadian flag
German flag abe books.de chapters.indigo.ca. Canadian flag
German flag amazon.de. abe books.com American flag
French flag abe books.fr amazon.com. American flag
French flag amazon.fr. barnes and noble.com American flag
Italian flag abe books.it powells.com American flag
Spanish flag iberlibro.com sony e-books American flag
Australian flag abe books anz

book cover recommend book⇒Learning Java, Third Edition
 paperback
ISBN13:978-0-596-00873-4impressioncounter
publisher:O’Reilly recommended
published:2005-05-01
by:Pat Niemeyer, Jonathan Knudsen
Covers Java 1.5, including generics, Java 1.4 enums, but not Java 1.6 annotations. Particularly good at explaining the use of the Java 1.2 Collection classes. Teaches with example code, my favourite technique. It has a tiger on the cover because Sun’s code name for Java 1.5 was Tiger.
UK flag abe books.co.uk abe books.ca Canadian flag
UK flag amazon.co.uk. amazon.ca. Canadian flag
German flag abe books.de chapters.indigo.ca. Canadian flag
German flag amazon.de. abe books.com American flag
French flag abe books.fr amazon.com. American flag
French flag amazon.fr. barnes and noble.com American flag
Italian flag abe books.it powells.com American flag
Spanish flag iberlibro.com sony e-books American flag
Australian flag abe books anz download o’reilly safari American flag

Learning More


CMP homejump to top You can get the freshest copy of this page from: or possibly from your local J: drive (Java virtual drive/mindprod.com website mirror)
http://mindprod.com/jgloss/gettingstarted.html J:\mindprod\jgloss\gettingstarted.html
CMP logofeedback Please email your feedback for publication, errors, omissions, typos, formatting errors, ambiguities, unclear wording, broken/redirected link reports, suggestions to improve this page or comments to Roedy Green : feedback email
mindprod.com IP:[65.110.21.43]
view BlogYour face IP:[38.107.191.108]
You are visitor number 58,012.