Best Java Books

Bradley Nice

Published in

Level Up!

6 min readJul 31, 2017

by Bradley Nice, Content Manager at ClickHelp.com — software documentation tool

What kind of language java is?

Java is the language of business applications, used at basically every single financial services institution for back end systems, portals, trading systems, market engines, online banking, etc. It’s the primary language of development for telco systems, ecommerce (eBay, Amazon, etc.), insurance applications, etc.
Java has been the #1 programming language for several years now (see the TIOBE index). (Cameron Purdy)

Let’s see what are the top Java books today?

Core Java Volume I: Fundamentals (Kindle — $31.91, paperback — $33.59)

Writing for serious programmers solving real-world problems, Cay Horstmann helps you achieve a deep understanding of the Java language and library. In this first volume of the two-volume work, Horstmann focuses on fundamental language concepts and the foundations of modern user interface programming. You’ll find in-depth coverage of topics ranging from Java object-oriented programming to generics, collections, lambda expressions, Swing UI design, and the latest approaches to concurrency and functional programming. This guide will help you

Leverage your existing programming knowledge to quickly master core Java syntax;
Understand how encapsulation, classes, and inheritance work in Java;
Master interfaces, inner classes, and lambda expressions for functional programming;
Improve program robustness with exception handling and effective debugging;
Write safer, more readable programs with generics and strong typing;
Use pre-built collections to collect multiple objects for later retrieval;
Master concurrent programming techniques from the ground up;
Build modern cross-platform GUIs with standard Swing components;
Deploy configurable applications and applets, and deliver them across the Internet;
Simplify concurrency and enhance performance with new functional techniques.

If you’re an experienced programmer moving to Java SE 8, Core Java®, Tenth Edition, will be your reliable, practical companion — now and for many years to come.

Java: The Complete Reference (Kindle — $34.59, paperback — $36.41)

Fully updated for Java SE 8, Java: The Complete Reference, Ninth Edition explains how to develop, compile, debug, and run Java programs. Bestselling programming author Herb Schildt covers the entire Java language, including its syntax, keywords, and fundamental programming principles, as well as significant portions of the Java API library. JavaBeans, servlets, applets, and Swing are examined and real-world examples demonstrate Java in action. New Java SE 8 features such as lambda expressions, the stream library, and the default interface method are discussed in detail. This Oracle Press resource also offers a solid introduction to JavaFX.

Coverage includes:

Data types, variables, arrays, and operators;
Control statements;
Classes, objects, and methods;
Method overloading and overriding;
Inheritance;
Interfaces and packages;
Exception handling;
Multithreaded programming;
Enumerations, autoboxing, and annotations;
The I/O classes;
Generics;
Lambda expressions;
String handling;
The Collections Framework;
Networking;
Event handling;
AWT and Swing;
The Concurrent API;
The Stream API;
Regular expressions;
JavaFX;
JavaBeans;
Applets and servlets;
Much, much more.

Murach’s Beginning Java with Eclipse (paperback — $44.57)

Want to learn Java?

Then, Murach’s Beginning Java with Eclipse is for you! Its goal is to ease the steep learning curve and it uses the Eclipse IDE to make you productive as quickly as possible. In fact, you’ll grow from beginner to entry-level professional!

Here’s how:

Section 1 guides you through the core concepts and coding you need to create simple object-oriented applications. By the end of this section, you’ll be using Eclipse to code, test, and debug 3-tier Java applications that use classes from the java SE 8 API as well as your own classes.
Then, sections 2, 3, and 4 let you build out your core Java and OOP skills. Here, you’ll find chapters that expand on skills that were presented in section 1 or that teach you new skills. That includes working with features that are new in Java 8, like lambda expressions and the new date/time API.
At that point, you’ll have all the Java prerequisites you need to start learning web or Android programming. Or, you can go on to section 5 to start developing desktop applications for business with a Swing interface and a MySQL database.

Along the way, the sample applications will show you how to apply your skills in the real world. And the chapter exercises will give you valuable hands-on experience programming (the solutions to these exercises are posted at our website, so you can check your work).

Java 8 in Action: Lambdas, Streams, and functional-style programming (paperback — $33.64)

Java 8 in Action is a clearly written guide to the new features of Java 8. The book covers lambdas, streams, and functional-style programming. With Java 8’s functional features you can now write more concise code in less time, and also automatically benefit from multicore architectures. It’s time to dig in!

What’s Inside

How to use Java 8’s powerful new features;
Writing effective multicore-ready applications;
Refactoring, testing, and debugging;
Adopting functional-style programming;
Quizzes and quick-check questions.

Java Cookbook: Solutions and Examples for Java Developers (Kindle — $27.99, paperback — $34.79)

From lambda expressions and JavaFX 8 to new support for network programming and mobile development, Java 8 brings a wealth of changes. This cookbook helps you get up to speed right away with hundreds of hands-on recipes across a broad range of Java topics. You’ll learn useful techniques for everything from debugging and data structures to GUI development and functional programming.

Each recipe includes self-contained code solutions that you can freely use, along with a discussion of how and why they work. If you are familiar with Java basics, this cookbook will bolster your knowledge of the language in general and Java 8’s main APIs in particular.

Recipes include: