14 Best Java Books for Absolute Beginners and Advanced (2022)

Stage 1 : Introduction for absolute beginners

1. Core Java Volume I–Fundamentals (11th EDITION)

If you want to learn Java formally and systematically, and plan to apply it to actual engineering projects, Core Java Volume I–Fundamentals is a necessary book.

Core Java has won the Jolt Award, the Oscar for the software industry. It has been favored by Java programmers and has had an enduring appeal since its publication. 

 Cay S. Horstmann, the book author, keeps abreast of the changes in the world. Each new version keeps pace with the development of the java development kit as soon as possible, and each version rewrites part of the content to take advantage of the latest features of Java.

After learning this book, you will become a real java programmer. The comprehensiveness of this book is not just a simple listing, but a clear main line from the complex content of Java through a careful organization, forming a complete knowledge system.

The whole book not only allows you to deeply understand all the basic knowledge and Java features involved in designing and implementing Java applications but also helps you master all the basic skills required for developing Java programs.

2. Introduction to Java Programming and Data Structures, Comprehensive Version (12th Edition)

Intro to Java Programming has been selected as a teaching material by universities all over the world. It has sold very well for more than 20 years worldwide. The 12th edition is updated according to Java 9-11.

This book provides lots of example codes and explains problem-solving skills through examples. Each chapter is equipped with many review questions and exercises to help readers master programming techniques and learn to apply the learned techniques to solve problems encountered in actual development.

It mainly introduces basic program design, syntax structure, object-oriented program design, inheritance and polymorphism, exception handling and I/O, abstract classes, and interfaces. 

This book can be used as teaching material for computer-related professional programming courses in Colleges and universities, and reference material for Java Coders.

Recommend: This book is the Best Java Book for Absolute Beginners

This book is more basic than Core Java. If you have difficulty reading Java core technology, I suggest you start with this book.

3. Thinking in Java (4th Edition)

Think in Java (4th Edition) has won widespread praise from programmers. Even obscure concepts will be dissolved in the face of Bruce Eckel’s literal affinity and small and direct programming examples. From the basic syntax of Java to its features (Object-Oriented concepts, concurrency, auto project construction, unit testing and debugging, and so on), this book can help you master these.

This book has 24 Chapters, including Operators, Controlling Execution, Access Control, Reusing Classes, Polymorphism, and Interfaces. It has deep research on exception handling, strings, generics, arrays, containers, Java I/O, enumeration types, concurrency, and graphical user interfaces.

These rich contents, including the basic syntax and features, are suitable for Java programmers at different levels. They are also good textbooks and reference books for teaching Object-Oriented programming and Java in Colleges and universities.

The classic Object-Oriented narration suitable for absolute beginners and personnel adds new examples and chapters to the updated JavaSE 5-6

1. The Test frame displays the program output.
2.  Design patterns run through many examples: adapter, bridge, responsibility chain, command, decorator, appearance, factory method, sharing element, roll call, data transmission object, empty object, proxy, singleton, state, policy, template method, and visitor.
3.  XML for data transmission, SWT, and Flash for the user interface.
4.  The chapter on concurrency has been rewritten to help readers master thread-related knowledge.
5.  More than 500 programs in more than 700 compiled files have been rewritten specifically for version 4 and JavaSE 5/6.
6.  The support website contains all source codes, annotated solution guides, weblogs, and multimedia learning materials. You can find these materials in mindview
7.  It covers all the basic knowledge and discusses the characteristics.
8.  The object-oriented principle is elaborated on in detail.

Stage 2 For Experienced Programmers

Stage2 and Stage3 books are for experienced programmers, if you are a beginner, you should finish Stage1 ,those books are Best Java Books for Absolute Beginners

4. Head First Design Patterns

The Book Head First Design Patterns can be used as transitional learning for absolute beginners and advanced learners. This book is an easy-to-understand guide to design patterns.

This book uses C# and Java with the help of real-life examples and picture demonstrations. It explains the concepts comprehensively and programming applications of the 23 design patterns of grass and GOF (GOF is the four author of the classic design patterns: elements of reusable object-oriented software. They are Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, and John Vlissides. These four people are often called a gang of four, or GOF for short. )

The author helps you understand the ideas and essence of design pattern, and apply them to your development process.

The whole book uses two chapters to make a basic introduction to design patterns and grasp and explain three design patterns: for each pattern, first, give a definition, then use a real-world example to illustrate the application of the pattern by analogy, and then use C # and Java code to illustrate the architecture and implementation of the pattern.

The last chapter provides a good learning environment for readers to practice design patterns. The appendix arranges self-test questions and answers for readers to practice and test the learning effect.

5. Refactoring Improving the Design of Existing Code

The Book Refactoring Improving the Design of Existing Code is an immortal classic of software development. It explains the principles and specific methods of reconfiguration vividly.

Refactoring, in a word, is to improve the code methodically without changing the external behavior. Many years ago, this book had become an indispensable part of the daily development work of many ordinary programmers.

As a result, this book has become a classic with the same name as the design mode. 

The book has been translated into many languages, such as Chinese, Germany, Russian, Japanese, and so on. It has been selling well all over the world.

Refactoring Improving the Design of Existing Code reveals the process of refactoring, explains the principle and practice of refactoring, and gives where and when to start mining code for improvement.

The book gives more than 70 feasible refactorings, each of which introduces the motivation and technology of a proven code transformation technique. The refactoring guidelines proposed in refactoring to improve the design of existing code will help you modify your code one step at a time, thus reducing the risks in the development process.

6. The Clean Coder

Software quality is not only dependent on architecture and project management but closely related to code quality. 

The Clean Coder puts forward a view that the quality of code is directly proportional to its cleanliness. The clean code lays a good foundation for later maintenance and upgrading. 

As an outstanding person in the field of programming, the author of this book has given a series of effective clean code operation practices.

These practices are the rules in this book, supplemented by positive and negative examples from actual projects. As long as these rules are followed, we can improve the code quality effectively.

This book is intended for all coders and technical managers who are interested in improving code quality. The rules introduced in the book are from the author’s many years of practical experience, covering many aspects of programming from naming to reconstruction.

7. HTTP the Definitive Guide

HTTP the Definitive Guide is written by David Gourley and Brian Totty. This book explains in detail how to use HTTP to develop web-based applications, how the core internet protocol interacts with the architecture building blocks, and how to correctly implement Internet clients and servers.

The core content of the HTTP Definitive guide is to understand the working principle of the web and how to apply this knowledge to web programming and management. It mainly covers the technical operation mode, motivation, performance, and objectives of HTTP and some related technical problems. The HTTP Definitive guide is suitable for those who want to understand HTTP and the underlying structure of the web.

This book tries to sort out some interrelated and often misunderstood rules in HTTP and writes a series of chapters based on various topics to introduce the characteristics of HTTP in all aspects. The book explains in detail why HTTP does this, not just how it does it.

In addition, to save the time of searching for references, it also introduced the important non-HTTP technologies that are necessary for many HTTP applications to work properly. In the easily organized appendix, you can find alphabetical references to headers that form the basis of the most common HTTP text. We hope that this conceptual design will help readers to use HTTP.

8. JavaScript The Definitive Guide

For the Java web developer, learning a little front-end knowledge is necessary. You need to know a little about HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

Javascript the Definitive Guide( 7th edition) gives a comprehensive introduction to the core concept of JavaScript, as well as the legacy and standard DOM implemented in the web browser.

It uses complex examples to illustrate how to handle tasks, such as verifying form data, cookies, and creating portable DHTML. 

It also includes a detailed reference manual, covering the core API of JavaScript, the legacy client API, and the W3C standard DOM API, describing each JavaScript object, method, property, constructor, constant, and event handler in these APIs.

Stage 3 For Advanced Expert,Who Want to Become an Architect

9. Java Concurrency in Practice

Java Concurrency In Practice is written by Brian Goetz. This book introduces Java threads and concurrency in simple terms. It is a perfect reference manual for Java concurrency. 

This book is recommended by the publisher  Oreillys for learning concurrent java.

Firstly, the book introduces the basic concepts of concurrency and thread safety and then tells us how to build blocks provided by the class library to avoid concurrency dangers.

Secondly, it also introduces how to combine small thread-safe classes into larger thread-safe ones and how to use threads to improve the throughput of concurrent applications.

Thirdly, it introduces how to identify tasks that can be executed in parallel, improve the responsiveness of a single program subsystem, how to ensure that concurrent programs perform the expected tasks, and improve the performance and scalability of concurrent code.

Finally, some advanced topics, such as explicit locks, atomic variables, non-blocking algorithms, and how to develop self-defined synchronization tool classes, are introduced.

10. Spring in Action (6th Edition)

Spring in Action is a classic and practical best-selling spring learning guide. The 6th Edition covers the milestone updates of spring 6.0 and spring boot 2.0.

The whole book is divided into five parts, with a total of 19 chapters. 

Part 1 (Chapters 1 to 5) covers the basic concepts of building spring applications. 

Part 2 (Chapters 6 to 9) discusses integrating spring applications with other applications.

 Part 3 (chapters 10-12) discusses the new support spring provides for reactive programming. 

Part 4 (chapters 13-15) splits the single application model and introduces spring cloud and microservice development. 

Part 5 (chapters 16 to 19) discusses preparing for the application to be put into production and how to deploy it.

This book is not only suitable for Java developers who have just started to learn spring boot and spring framework to get started quickly but suitable for experienced spring developers to learn the new features of spring, especially for enterprise Java developers.

11. Inside the Java 2 Virtual Machine

The author of this book has won the excellent author award selected by the professional technology magazine Java Report for this book. Careful readers can find much praise for the first edition of this book on the Internet.

The author reveals the internal working principle of Java Virtual Machine(JVM). Understanding these contents in depth will be of great benefit to readers to write more efficient programs faster!

Inside the Java 2 Virtual Machine is divided into 20 chapters. 

Chapters 1-4 explain the architecture of Java virtual machine, including Java stack, heap, method area, execution engine, etc. 

Chapter 5-20 describes the internal details of Java technology in depth, including garbage collection, Java security model, Java connection model and dynamic extension mechanism, class files, operations, and process control, etc. 

Chapter 6 and appendix a-c security can be used as reference manuals for class files and instruction sets.

The book also comes with a CD-ROM, which contains interactive sample applets and sample source code to help explain the content of the text.

12.Java Performance: The Definitive Guide

There are many books about Java on the market, but not many focus on Java performance, and few can easily show the difficulties of Java performance optimization. The Oreilly Java Performance is one of them.

By using the JVM and Java platforms, as well as the Java language and application program interface, Java Performance: The Definitive Guide explains in detail the relevant knowledge of Java performance tuning, helps readers to understand all aspects of the performance of the Java platform, and finally makes the program more powerful.

By reading this book, you can:

• Use four basic principles to maximize the effect of performance testing
•  Collect performance data of Java applications using the tools included in JDK
•  Understand the advantages and disadvantages of the JIT compiler
•  Tune JVM garbage collector to reduce program impact
•  Learn how to manage heap memory and JVM native memory
•  Learn how to maximize the performance of Java threads and synchronization
•  Solve the performance problems of Java EE and Java SE application program interfaces
•  Improve the performance of Java-driven database applications

13. Implementing Domain-Driven Design

Domain Driven Design (DDD) teaches us how to do a better job in software and use Object-Oriented technology. 

It provides us with a new perspective for designing software, and leaves developers with a big problem: how to put domain-driven design into practice? 

Vaughn Vernon‘s book Implementing Domain Driven Design gives us a comprehensive answer.

Implementing Domain Driven Design discusses in detail how to implement DDD from the strategic and tactical levels, including many best practices, design guidelines, and neutral discussions on some issues. Implementing Domain Driven Design is divided into 14 chapters.

In the DDD strategy part, this book explains the domain, bounded context, context mapping, and architecture. 

The tactical part includes entities, value objects, domain services, domain events, aggregation, and resource libraries.

 A fictional case study runs through the whole book, which is very useful for explaining the DDD implementation with examples.

14. Microservices Patterns

To successfully develop application software based on microservice architecture, we should master a series of brand-new architecture ideas and practices.

Chris Richardson, the book author, is the pioneer of Microservice architecture and the opinion leader of the Java developer community.

Chris Richardson collects, classifies, and explains 44 architecture design patterns, it tries to help us solve problems such as Service Splitting, transaction management, query, and cross-service communication.

Microservices Patterns will teach you how to develop and deploy production-level microservice architecture applications. This valuable set of architectural design patterns is based on decades of experience in distributed systems. 

Chris also adds new patterns to the development of services and combines them into a system that can be reliably expanded and executed under real conditions.

This book is not only a catalog of patterns but provides experience-driven suggestions to help you design, implement, test, and deploy microservice-based applications.

Summary

Some books listed above are Best Java Books for Absolute Beginners, and others are for advanced. 

If you want to follow the path of Java programming, you must have these classic books on your bookshelf.

Of course, in addition to daily theoretical knowledge acquisition, learning programming is more about growing up in practice and training at work. The computer is a huge and profound discipline, and programming is only the tip of the Iceberg, such as computer networks, databases, operating systems, etc. To master this subject well, in addition to the compulsory courses in universities, especially in the 21st century, when technology is updated and iterated so rapidly, we need to continue to learn and grow to keep up with the pace of the times!

The books recommended today are mainly to cultivate your thinking ability, which determines how far you can go. If you want to continue to work in the IT industry, whether you do pure technology or technical management, your leadership is determined by the breadth and depth of your thinking. After you have learned the above books, you can find some hot technical books to read, such as docker, spring cloud, and spring boot. Read every book carefully and take notes, and you can become a Java expert.