What are the most important things to learn about Java Programming? [closed]

Answer 1

Of course you need to learn the basic features of Java before learning anything else.
Of the "advanced" language features, I would pick reflection.

For the GUI, there are several options. I would still pick Swing, since it is the most common tool.

For the web, learn servlets and JSP (so you know the basics), then learn a framework (struts, JSF, etc.).

There is no clear cut favorite in my opinion.

Answer 2

One very important aspect is to learn the best practices of the language. One way to get up to speed about that quickly is to read Joshua Blochs book "Effective Java". I cannot recommend it enough.

Answer 3

Learn the core language well and then learn about best practices.

Understand the limitations of the language and look for ways to improve on this. Apache Commons is a good source of knowledge for this.

After that, understand and learn concurrency with Java and the underlying memory model.

• If you need to learn a GUI framework then look at Swing or Eclipse SWT.
• If you need to learn a web application framework then pick one of the hundreds out there. I suggest looking at SpringMVC or Struts 2.

Answer 4

Pointers. Go back to C and learn pointers.

(almost) Everything in Java is a pointer, so if you don't understand them, there's no use in any of those fancy frameworks.

Answer 5

I'd get a good beginners java book and go through it. A good free one is Thinking in Java http://www.mindview.net/Books/TIJ/. I'd also recommend getting a good IDE like Eclipse or Netbeans. If you want to do web development you can find some good tutorials on struts2 or JSF.