O'Reilly, "Learning Java" is quite good to start in my opinion
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/learnjava/
I don't know if you need to bother about all this things at the
begining,
I would advise you to install sun-java6-jre & sun-java6-jdk and try to
play with it.
javac to compile, java classname to run it.

Try this too, I just stumbled on it while searching for something else
- seems short and good intro.
http://www.learn-programming.za.net/programming_java_learn01.html

Sun's own Java tutorials are a useful start:
http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/index.html

rossum

 Java is the most popular language of this decade and so
 there are very many books and tutorials on learning it.

 Don't assuma that you can learn it all in a week or so,
 take some time to do the exercises as well.

 Some resources can be found in

http://www.purl.org/stefan_ram/pub/java_resources_en

 My review of a single sentence, reportedly from »Thinking in
 Java«, follows.

                              ~~

 Recently someone claimed that "Thinking in Java 3", 8
 contained this sentence:

 Here, Eckel writes:

     »object that's defined«.

 Objects, however, are not "defined", they are /created/ at
 run-time. Names of reference variables are being /declared/
 in the source text, not "defined".

http://java.sun.com/docs/books/jls/third_edition/html/statements.html#5920

 Then, he continues to write

     »argument reference be final«.

 This might intend to say that a reference parameter was
 declared with "final". "final" is not an attribute of a,
 /reference/, but of a variable.

 However, this is not about /arguments/ (the reference
 arguments do not have to be declared "final" here), but
 about /parameters/. The distinction between these to
 Java terms seems to be unknown to Eckel.

 parameter:

http://java.sun.com/docs/books/jls/third_edition/html/names.html#6.8.7

 arguments:

http://java.sun.com/docs/books/jls/third_edition/html/expressions.html#15.12

 He also writes:

     »the compiler requires«.

 It might be the case that the compiler of Mr Eckel indeed
 requires this, but he should teach a language instead of an
 implementation, so it might be preferable to write
 "the language specification requires«.

 Also, anonymous inner classes are not being /defined/ in
 Java, as Eckel writes at the beginning of the quotation, but
 they are being /declared/.

 Moreover, "anonymous" is an unnecessary restriction, because
 the assertion is valid for /all/ inner classes. Someone
 learning by this sentence thus needs to learn anew at another
 time that this is also valid for non-anonymous inner classes,
 or he might believe erroneously for an indetermined amount of
 time, that it is only valid for anonymous inner classes.

 Is there a way to improve the sentence? One attempt by me:

     A parameter to be used within an inner class of its method
     needs to be declared »final«.

 Even the Java Language Specification itself is easier to
 read than Eckel (and of course, much more correct):

     Any local variable, formal method parameter or exception
     handler parameter used but not declared in an inner class
     must be declared final.

http://java.sun.com/docs/books/jls/third_edition/html/classes.html#8.1.3

 All the reported faults have been found by me within a single
 sentence chosen at random (I did not read the book, but
 discovered the sentence in another posting, claiming to quote
 this sentence from "Thinking in Java".) If one extrapolates the
 error quotient to the whole TIJ, it gives a horrid impression.

 Some books might sell chiefly because the buyer wants to
 express agreement with their title. When one is learning a
 foreign language one does not want to think everything in
 English first and then painfully translate it word-by-word.
 So one might choose "Thinking in Java" instead of a
 garden-variety "Introduction to Java", because one longs for
 the promise given by its title, not suspecting that the author
 Eckel himself might be far from "thinking in Java".

Start with Java SE (Standard Edition).  For compiling though, you'll
need the JavaSDK (Software Development Kit) version of SE.  J2EE also
comes in two flavors, stay away from it for now.

AWT is not exactly obsolete.  Swing uses it internally, but you
shouldn't have to worry about AWT to begin.  Use NetBeans IDE (Sun's own
tutorials tell you to) so you can use the GUI layout tool and avoid hand
coding.  You should read the bits in the tutorial about hand coding but
again to get started you don't want to get into it.

After you get more familiar with the over all API, hand coding things
will get easier and be more realistic for learning and actual projects.

Nope, gotta start with Java first.  J2EE is a bunch of libraries.  Java
is the core language.  By analogy: learn C++ first, then you can
understand the STL.

I'll second O'Reilly's Learning Java.  The tutorials on the web from sun
are also good, but I found them hard to actually get started on.  Sun's
tutorials worked better as a kind of live reference in between Learn
Java and the JavaDocs.

http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/
http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/api/

I don't care for Mr. Eckel's books personally.

Don't let that alphabet soup to confuse you. All you need is Java
Standard Edition, you can worry about things like Enterprise Edition
later (if at all!). You may spend years being a competent and
productive Java developer (I have) without knowing the first thing
about JavaBeans or even J2EE. Some of the confusing numnbers (Java 2,
or the recent Java 6) are marketing gizmos.

Swing is built on top of AWT. It supersedes and improves on it.

The real contenders are Swing (from Java's biological father, Sun) and
SWT from its adoptive father, IBM (which is to say, from Eclipse).

Absolutely not. You have to walk first. Everything that can be done
with the EE can be done without it (with more manual work). EE is good
for sites that have a LOT of traffic and/or developers.

You must be used to Microsoft's way of destroying the past and forcing
users and developers to endless upgrades. Java builds upon the past.
Old Java programs compile and run in new versions, and vice versa.

It is a perfect start, if you are considering free stuff.

Oh, you know about the official Java Tutorial, don't you?

If you come from the M$ camp, other than telling you: "poor guy, what
did you do in a previous life to deserve that!?" :-) I can assure you
that the developers in this sode of the street are more intelligent,
insightful and helpful not to mention fun and good looking. Oh, I
forgot modest.

-Ramon

On Tue, 4 Dec 2007 23:27:08 -0800 (PST), Google Man
<googleman04@yahoo.com> wrote, quoted or indirectly quoted someone who
said :

see http://mindprod.com/jgloss/gettingstarted.html 
learn AWT, then Swing.