Reddit reviews Java Performance: The Definitive Guide: Getting the Most Out of Your Code

I can't recommend this book enough - http://www.amazon.com/Java-Performance-Definitive-Scott-Oaks/dp/1449358454

O'Reily's Java Performance Definitive 1st Edition. It has everything you'll need. The section on the "new" G1 collector is special.

Make a personal project. I made a game editor.



Read more books.

Java Swing:

https://www.amazon.com/Java-Swing-Second-James-Elliott/dp/0596004087

Java I/O:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0596527500/

Java Generics and Collections:

https://www.amazon.com/Java-Generics-Collections-Development-Process/dp/0596527756/

Java Concurrency:

https://www.amazon.com/Java-Threads-Understanding-Concurrent-Programming/dp/0596007825/

Java Network Programming:

https://www.amazon.com/Network-Programming-Elliotte-Rusty-Harold/dp/1449357679/

Java Web Services:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1449365116/

Java Database Programming:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1565926161/

Java Performance:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1449358454/

Intro to Design Patterns w/ Java:

https://www.amazon.com/Head-First-Design-Patterns-Brain-Friendly-ebook/dp/B00AA36RZY/

Design Patterns (not Java and very dry, but much more in depth):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_Patterns

If you read every O'Reilly book on Java and do two or three big projects (or ten small ones) with what you learn in each book, you will learn how to do anything with Java. Java can do anything any other language can, but it takes longer to get there. Once you get there - once you build it - it will run forever, provided it's built well.



Online resources.

http://www.tutorialspoint.com/swing/

https://www.javatpoint.com/java-swing

The javax.swing class:

https://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/javax/swing/package-summary.html

The Java API specification:

https://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/

Never took one of these, defer to someone else's advice:

https://www.udemy.com/java-swing-complete/

It takes a while to figure out how to effectively use google. Look up my posting history to see how to format posts. You may need to make a test class to simplify things or provide a simple (and obviously safe) thing that people can execute and debug, if they decide to help you.

You will spend a lot of time on the Java API spec, so make sure that you know how to read a method header and signature. You'll get used to it after a few weeks.

*

General advice.**

Debugging is the single most important thing you do. If you can't see what's going wrong, you won't fix it except via trial and error (which is frustrating and takes forever). Any time something goes wrong, either walk through it with a debugger or get print statements working. Getting print statements working is often a job in itself.

I spend more time debugging than I do programming, because when things are going right it's a breeze but when they aren't it takes ages.

Take up some other hobby that keeps you active.

When you're frustrated and nothing is working, do something else. Go for a walk, garden for a bit, cook something. Make sure you have a notepad or note-taking program on your phone so you can stop and take notes when the solution comes to you.

If nothing else is working, just screw around with things and make print statements to see what they do. That's how I learned everything.

Try to break everything.

Don't be afraid of embarassing yourself.

Java Performance: The Definitive Guide

While not a walkthrough of the JVM, key sections of this book give a pretty good insight on what you need to know: Java Performace: The Definitive Guide