Old is gold! This is what we say whenever we think of something from the old times which still holds good. In the digital era, books are sometimes misunderstood as old means of learning, when things are available widely on the internet and in the form of soft copies. Reading should never stop! And when it comes to Java which is one of the programming languages having a huge community and enormous resources to learn, there are some books written for Java that can provide more concise and structured learning and some of them have been there for almost decades.
So, let’s checkout the 10 Best Java Books For Beginners and Advanced Programmers in 2022.
1. Core Java For the Impatient
We often get impatient while starting to learn any new language. We want to grasp everything quickly to implement our knowledge to write a code. Cay S. Horstmann took our impatience literally and presented us with this book which covers everything developers are supposed to know about modern Java. Its uniqueness is that it presents the knowledge in chunks for easy understanding. A complete but concise explanation of lambda expressions, new Stream APIs, and other features of Java makes this book a valuable read.
2. Head First Java
Let’s admit it we are more into strong visuals and playful appearance in comparison to only text when it comes to learning. Authored by Kathy Sierra, Bert Bates, Head First Java is a beginner-friendly guide that looks promising to learning Java in a playful manner with puzzles, mysteries, and appealing visuals. Despite being this type, it contains serious concepts such as threads, distributed programming, network sockets. It not only teaches you Java but teaches you how to think like a Java programmer by explaining and assessing by giving real-time scenarios.
3. Java For Dummies
Written by Barry A. Burd, this book not only covers the basics of Java but also helps readers figure out when they can use the existing code. It is a straightforward guide having material on code reuse, multimedia capabilities, cloud coverage, and new features like parallel frameworks, closures, and much more. It is a nice Java book for beginners who want point-to-point and concise explanations of the Java fundamentals.
4. Java: A Beginner’s Guide
How cannot we trust a book having “beginner” in its title to be fruitful for Java beginners? It is said that Java: A Beginner’s Guide is our gateway to the programming books series composed by Herbert Schildt. The author begins with the basics of creating, compiling, and running a Java program. This book covers some advanced concepts as well such as multithreading, lambda expressions, and generics. The key feature of this book is that it is crisp and clear in its teaching. It contains hands-on exercises and end-of-chapter quizzes to evaluate oneself.
5. Thinking in Java
Wouldn’t it be cool if we can think in our favorite Java programming language just like we think in our native language or some other language in our head? Thinking in Java by Bruce Eckel explains the WHY of Java by citing practical programming examples. It stands high because of its extra level of clarity, keen organization and is good for building blocks of the programming while keeping the concepts beginner-friendly. The chapter on Collections is notable in this book while other chapters also give a deeper understanding of object-oriented programming in general.
6. Java: The Complete Reference
Does exactly what it says on the tin! Java: The Complete Reference by Herbert Schildt is a complete reference when it comes to having a Java book that we can always look up when we have to study or revise any concept related to Java. This book focuses step by step and smoothly on what we need to know. A great variety of examples as we dive deeper into it makes it understandable and knowledgeable. OOPS, the concept is explained using box and it covers applets, multithreading, servlets, and collections way down from basic to extremely useful concepts.
7. Black Book
Looking for a Java book covering from the most basic syntax to the most advanced Internet programming? Give a try to Black Book by Steven Holzner. Every concept in this book is covered by working examples and it explains Java Swing components, Internet networking programming, and Internet Security in an appealing way. The design patterns, flowcharts, and design tools make it a Java book written from the glance of experts.
8. Effective Java
Effective Java by Joshua Bloch is really “effective” when it comes to learning Java as it not only tells about the concepts of Java but also how to implement its libraries to the best. This book is generally on software design concepts and teaches how to write Java code better than before and more professionally. This book is not a one-time book as beginners can find some topics very advanced in nature. In that case, the book can be kept as a reference to go through the concepts as one climbs the ladder of learning Java in the career. The book keeps on updating with the latest version and latest knowledge of concepts involved in Java.
9. The Well-Grounded Java Developer: Vital Techniques of Java 7 and Polyglot Programming
Gone are the times when Java books contained only information related to Java because this book by Benjamin Evans and Martijn Verburg lets us explore some aspects of JVM-based languages like Scala, Clojure, and Groovy. The book covers Java 7 thoroughly, expecting the reader to be familiar with Java. It covers the examples that are practically sounded and helps us dive into modern approaches to write our Java code and perform concurrency and much more to the dev processes.
10. Java 8 in Action: Lambdas, Streams, and Functional-Style Programming
Features of Java 8 such as lambdas, streams have really reduced the number of lines of code we write with conventional loops and if statements. This book by Raoul-Gabriel Urma, Mario Fusco, and Alan Mycroft covers Java 8 and sets us in action to code efficiently in Java after learning from the book. It is like a guide for Java 8 and covers lambdas, streams and functional programming, the new Stream API, and explains major other Java 8 features such as Completable Future, Optional, default methods, and the Date and Time API.
These Top 10 Java Books For Beginners and Advanced Programmers are full packages in themselves and are a wide ocean of knowledge for Java. While learning Java or using Java in a career, these books are like friends whom you can communicate with whenever you are stuck with using the Java concepts in our programming world or in case to enhance your knowledge.
