Please suggest the best online courses, books, blogs and other resources to learn Java. I am a complete beginner.
Also, please suggest learning paths or ways to learn the language effectively. I'm kind of lost on where to begin from.
How about a free 16-hour video course called "Java for Complete Beginners"? :-)
It's by a guy named John Purcell. The course covers Java basics pretty well (note: there may be a few new-ish things like BigDecimal that you'll need to look up later, either because he didn't get to them or, more likely, because Java may not have had them when the course was put together).
(You'll also learn how to use the basics of the Eclipse IDE as part of this course).
I'd suggest setting up Java and Eclipse on your machine and at least following along, i.e. doing what he's doing on-screen, if you can, to get it into your fingers. (Having 2 monitors would be very helpful here).
And then try to write some small programs to use what you've learned (if you can't come up with anything, you can do exercises on, e.g., HackerRank.com, Codility.com, etc.).
*
(He has some other free courses as well, including one on Java Design Patterns -- that's available at CaveOfProgramming.com and it's also on Youtube -- here's the playlist for that:
It's a more advanced course that will review some basics and then take you into more advanced aspects of Java programming, including Java 8. It's faster-paced than the "Java for Complete Beginners" course I described above, and is not meant for beginners, which is why it would seem good as a next step.
There are no videos, but there are PDFs, slides and source-code for download.
And it also uses Eclipse, like John Purcell's video courses.
It's by a guy named John Purcell. The course covers Java basics pretty well (note: there may be a few new-ish things like BigDecimal that you'll need to look up later, either because he didn't get to them or, more likely, because Java may not have had them when the course was put together).
He has the course on his site, https://CaveOfProgramming.com , and it's also available on https://Udemy.com as a free course and the material is also on YouTube via this playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9DF6E4B45C36D411
(You'll also learn how to use the basics of the Eclipse IDE as part of this course).
I'd suggest setting up Java and Eclipse on your machine and at least following along, i.e. doing what he's doing on-screen, if you can, to get it into your fingers. (Having 2 monitors would be very helpful here).
And then try to write some small programs to use what you've learned (if you can't come up with anything, you can do exercises on, e.g., HackerRank.com, Codility.com, etc.).
*
(He has some other free courses as well, including one on Java Design Patterns -- that's available at CaveOfProgramming.com and it's also on Youtube -- here's the playlist for that:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtTVgBdymZBjtal6O9bw1... )