10 Advanced Java Books and Courses for Experienced Developers
Advanced Java books and Courses to learn Multithreading and concurrency, JVM internals, Collections, NIO, Object-Oriented Design, Functional Programming, and Design Patterns.
Hello Java programmers, if you are looking for advanced books to take your Java programming skills to next level then you have come to the right place.
Earlier, I have shared 10 advanced Java courses. In this article, I am going to share 10 advanced Java books for intermediate and experienced programmers.
Once you learn Java and are done with reading some of the best-known introductory books on Java and have a couple of years of experience under your belt, you would be hungry to transition from an intermediate Java developer to an expert Java programmer, also known as Java guru.
This transition is not smooth, and I have seen many Java developers having 2 to 6 years of experience stuck where they are and have absolutely no knowledge of advanced topics like JVM internals, Concurrency, Garbage collection, and Performance tuning.
As an expert Java programmer, you must be good at Multi-threading and Concurrency, knows good detail about JVM internals and Garbage collection algorithms, have a strong understanding of Java Collection API and Concurrency utilities, Java NIO and NIO 2, and object-oriented design patterns.
To add to that knowledge of Unit testing, built tools, best practices, release management, and advanced debugging skill is also absolutely must. You can add lambda expressions, streams, and other Java 8 features into that list as well.
In this article, I will share 10 books that will help you to become an Expert Java Programmer. I highly recommend these books for Intermediate Java programmers and those who are having 2 to 5 years of experience, knows Java, have done a couple of project in Java and aspire to become expert Java programmers.
10 Advanced Java Books and Courses for Senior Developers
These are the 10 books I would recommend to any advanced Java developer or a programmer who wants to learn Java and programming better. These books cover topics ranging from JVM internals, Performance tuning, Design Patterns, Unit testing, best practices, Multithreading and Concurrency, etc to make you a complete and all-around Java developer.
1. Optimizing Java
One attribute which distinguishes a Java programmer from a Senior Java programmer is a good understanding of JVM, Garbage Collection, and experience of performance tuning, and this is currently the best book available in the market.
There are many books that focus mainly on Garbage collections and performance but this one describes many more aspects of JVM internals like threading, JVM internal memory representation, bytecode, JIT compilers, etc. Moreover, the book contains an overview of many useful tools that can help you in daily work with JVM.
If you need some help and want to see things, in reality, I also suggest you check out the Java Application Performance and Memory Management course by Matt Greecroft and Virtual Programmers.
It’s a wonderful course to learn how to analyze heap dump, improve Java performance, understand GC logs, and solve memory leaks. I highly recommend it.
2. Effective Java
Your transition from Java developer to advanced Java developer is not complete until you read this masterpiece.
This is also the most recommended book for senior Java developers because of the content, clarity, message, style, and authority of Joshua Bloch, who has written API for Collection framework in Java, several classes in java.lang package.
I strongly suggest you read the Effective Java book at least once to understand Java API better and most important to learn how to use Java APIs in the right way.
3. Java Concurrency in Practice
Another attribute of an experience Java developer is a sound knowledge of concurrency and multi-threading. It’s a complicated topic to master, and that’s why you need an accurate and authoritative book on the subject. Java programmers are lucky that they got this book from Brian Goetz.
The only thing which concerns me is that the concepts themselves are not so easy so many times programmer finds it really difficult to read a book like this.
If you also face the same problem, I suggest you join the Java Concurrency in Practice Bundle course by Heinz Kabutz, a Java Champion and one of my favorite instructors.
4. Java By Comparison: Become a Java Craftsman in 70 Examples
This is another great book for experienced Java programmers who really want to hone their Java skills and become Java experts.
This Java book is not about syntax and semantics but about how to do real-world things in a better way. If you want to become a professional Java developer which every company wants to hire, then this book is for you.
This book provides hands-on advice to level up your coding style through small and understandable examples that compare flawed code to an improved example. In the process, you will learn handy tips and tricks, as well as common bugs an experienced Java programmer needs to know.
5. Head First Design Pattern
Apart from GC, Multi-threading, and Collections API, another aspect of advanced Java developers is good knowledge of design patterns and how to use them in Java programs.
I have read a couple of books on design patterns, including all-time classic GOF design patterns, but no one has connected to me better than Head First.
It could be style, diagrams, silly images, or whatever, but I really owe my knowledge of design patterns to this book.
I still remember when I first read a couple of pages of this book explaining why composition is better than Inheritance, I was convinced that this is the book I must read.
It’s been many years, but I still have a copy of the Head First Design Pattern and keep looking at it when I feel bored or need to revise my design pattern skills.
You can also combine this book with the Design Pattern in Java course by Dmitri Nestruk on Udemy to learn about the modern implementation of classic Java design patterns.
6. Well-grounded Java Developer
It’s not enough for an advanced Java developer to know just Java in today’s world. Knowledge of other JVM languages like Scala, Groovy, and Closure helps a lot.
Actually, If you want to start your transition from Java programmer to advanced Java programmer, this is the book you should read.
This is the must-have book for modern-day Java developers. It explains new changes in Java, including those in JDK 7 like try-with-resources, NIO2.0, and concurrency changes, but most importantly, It explains why it is so expensive to add new features to the JVM.
7. Clean Code
This is really an excellent book and my favorite one too. This is not just for Java developers but any programmer who wants to learn the trade of software development and programming.
Uncle Bob Martin needs no introduction, he is one of the most respected names in the Object-Oriented Programming world, and given Java is the best OOP language we have and to add on that Clean Code examples are in Java itself.
This is a close cousin of the Code Complete book, which is more suited for our C++ friends.
By the way, if you need an online course to accompany this book then I also recommend you to join the Clean Code with Java: Learn Simple Design, Refactoring & TDD course by Ranga Karnam, one of my favorite Udemy instructors for Java topics.
8. Refactoring
The code is the signature of a programmer. All this learning is to write code that can withstand the test of time. Advanced Java developer is expected to write high-quality code, and refactoring is art for turning a low-quality code into high-quality code.
One additional responsibility of many Senior Java programmers is to keep the code quality of the project in check by continually doing code reviews and refactoring junior programmer’s code.
This book will teach you how to refactor code without breaking it and that’s the most important lesson I have learned in the book. Along the way, you will also learn about unit testing and how to write effective tests to cover key functionalities of your code.
If you need an online training course to join along with this book for active learning, I highly recommend you to join the Refactoring Pyramid explained in simple steps (Java) course by Wlodek Karkowski from Udemy.
9. Test-Driven
You cannot become an advanced Java developer until you master the art of Unit testing and test-driven development. Everybody loves a programmer who does due diligence, writes a test, and works hard to improve the quality of code.
There was a time when Unit testing was considered additional, but not now. If you are a developer, you are expected to write good quality Unit tests. Java world is blessed with so many useful open-source frameworks for Unit testing like JUnit, Mockito,
While it's easy to learn JUnit and Mockito, it's not that easy to write tests for real-world applications which interact with databases, APIs, and other external services. This book will teach you some really good techniques and practices to implement TDD in your project and create better code.
I highly recommend this book to every Java developer, both beginners, and experienced ones, and if you need a course to join along with this book, I recommend joining Learn Java Unit Testing with Junit & Mockito in 30 Steps course from Udemy.
10. Functional Programming in Java
Another quality of an experienced programmer is knowledge of multiple programming paradigms like Procedural, Object-Oriented, and Functional. Since Java 8 brings functional programming to the Java world, it becomes imperative for advanced Java developers to master the art of functional programming.
Java 8 is already established stand, and I believe it will be mandatory for every Java developer very quickly in the coming years.
If you need an online course for some hands-on experience then you can also check out Learn Java Functional Programming with Lambda and Stream course by Ranga Karnam on Udemy.
That’s all about this list of the best advanced Java books for intermediate and experienced programmers. This list is not for beginners as they won’t teach you how to write hello world in Java, neither they will explain to you how to compile and run your Java program.
These books are for those Java programmers who already working in Java and aspire to learn Java in depth. In order to deeply learn a programming language, one book is not enough, you probably need to learn.
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P. S. — If you are looking for some courses to learn Java in-depth, check out this list of Top 10 Java Courses for both beginners and intermediate developers on Medium. It contains courses to learn Java from scratch as well as master useful topics like Collections, Concurrency, and JVM internals.
