[thelist] Re: [thelist]Java books (was PHP vs JSP)

[Richard Bennett]

> on this note.. can you guys name some good books for learning Java? My
> cousin works at Oracle, and she told me that Java is the next language I
> should learn..

>i'm a begining programmer.. i love o'reilly's "nutshell" series, but are
>there any other ones i should pick up?

I somehow wonder if that is really such good advice. Sure, java is a great
language to learn about object oriented coding, but how relevant is it to a
beginning (web) programmer?
Java is just about completely finished for client-side applets, especially
now MS isn't including it with IE6 anymore.
It's still used on servers, but these are usually not the kind of server a
beginning programmer would expect to be working on (they are expensive by
and large).

I would think the most relevant languages/mark-ups to start with would be:

HTML
PHP (and/or ASP)
Javascript.
then maybe some Perl and Flash,
and then XML and other emerging technologies like C# for .NET.
Somewhere round this point you might want to look into Java-server too.

Regarding books, I find the best things to read is the documentation. This
is usually 500+ pages of pretty boring stuff, which is why most people don't
bother to read them, but this is what the people who write the books read.
I always have some documentation or other lying near the toilet, that way no
time goes to waste!

But then that's just my view, and I don't work at Oracle :o)

Richard.