The one book that stands out in my experience of learning java while already having experience in C and C++ was Effective Java by Joshua Bloch.
It is great in the sense that it describes a lot of normal programming challenges and tells you an effective way to do this in java. It also teaches provides a bit more in depth knowledge about OO fundamentals such as the relation between the equals() and the hashcode() methods. It is split up in small items, so it is fairly good as a reference book as well.
On the downside: some of the advice is old-fashioned especially with the advent of dependency injection. On the bright side: as a beginning developer it is probably better to stay away from modern solutions, and focus on the core language for now. So there is not much lost here.
As a second point, I would like to spark your interest for GUI solutions in Java. One of the unique things about a language is what frameworks exist for rendering graphics. Since you are interested in creating games, graphics will come into it at some point. Just to be able to give you actual useful advice in this area, It would be useful to know what kind of games would you like to develop? 2D scrollers? 3D shooters? Turn based browser games? I think you will have more fun if you can practice the language while making your first games, so please let us know your interests.
Edit: perfectionist, a sentence did not make sense.
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#1Verik
Posted 15 September 2012 - 08:20 AM
The one book that stands out in my experience of learning java while already having experience in C and C++ was Effective Java by Joshua Bloch.
It is great in the sense that it describes a lot of normal programming challenges and tells you an effective way to do this in java. It also teaches provides a bit more in depth knowledge about OO fundamentals such as the relation between the equals() and the hashcode() methods. It is split up in small items, so it is fairly good as a reference book as well.
On the downside: some of the advice is old-fashioned especially with the advent of dependency injection. On the bright side: as a beginning developer it is probably better to stay away from modern solutions, and focus on the core language for now. So there is not much lost here.
As a second point, I would like to spark your interest for GUI solutions in Java. One of the unique things about a language is what frameworks exist for rendering graphics. Since you are interested in creating games, graphics will come into it at some point. Just to be able to give you some advice: what kind of games would you like to develop? 2D scrollers? 3D shooters? Turn based browser games? I think you will have more fun if you can practice the language while making your first games, so please let us know your interests.
It is great in the sense that it describes a lot of normal programming challenges and tells you an effective way to do this in java. It also teaches provides a bit more in depth knowledge about OO fundamentals such as the relation between the equals() and the hashcode() methods. It is split up in small items, so it is fairly good as a reference book as well.
On the downside: some of the advice is old-fashioned especially with the advent of dependency injection. On the bright side: as a beginning developer it is probably better to stay away from modern solutions, and focus on the core language for now. So there is not much lost here.
As a second point, I would like to spark your interest for GUI solutions in Java. One of the unique things about a language is what frameworks exist for rendering graphics. Since you are interested in creating games, graphics will come into it at some point. Just to be able to give you some advice: what kind of games would you like to develop? 2D scrollers? 3D shooters? Turn based browser games? I think you will have more fun if you can practice the language while making your first games, so please let us know your interests.