My Company is losing there Java Developer and I have been asked to take up the slack. I have been programming for almost 30 years using over 20 programming languages so I don't think that I should have a problem in picking up Java. What I was looking for is a suggestion for a good self learning program or book(s). We have a number of applications built using Borlands Jbuilder.
Any help would be appreciated.
Two usual places to start: The Java Tutorial (at Sun's site), and the free PDF book Thinking in Java. Google will find both for you. Those should give the basics; after that if you need specific APIs (JDBC, Swing, EJB, sockets, servlets / JSP, XML, etc) google "JDBC tutorial" etc. There's an amazing amount of stuff online. Or visit your friendly book store; I usually like O'Reilly books myself.
And use the forums! Welcome to Teh Jav!
If your programming experience is as described then you should be able to look at the Java code and have a pretty good idea what it's doing. You're going to be tripped up by the idiosyncrasies and (if none of your 20 languages are object-oriented) by object polymorphism and that sort of thing. The references given by sjasja should cover those issues.
As the people said, at first you need to take a look at OOP.
Java sintaxe are very familiar than C sintaxe (while, if, switch, so far) thus I guess that you won't have problem to learn.
You should be follow a pattern to make you code clean and easier to keep, in this situation, it's good to read some book about Desing Pattern (GoF maybe).
Good luck in your study and welcome to the Java world ;)
Here's my standard list:
[url=http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/]Sun's basic Java tutorial[/url]
[url=http://java.sun.com/learning/new2java/index.html]Sun's New To Java Center[/url]. Includes an overview of what Java is, instructions for setting up Java, an intro to programming (that includes links to the above tutorial or to parts of it), quizzes, a list of resources, and info on certification and courses.
[url=http://javaalmanac.com]http://javaalmanac.com[/url]. A couple dozen code examples that supplement [url=http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0201752808?v=glance]The Java Developers Almanac[/url].
[url=http://www.jguru.com]jGuru[/url]. A general Java resource site. Includes FAQs, forums, courses, more.
[url=http://www.javaranch.com]JavaRanch[/url]. To quote the tagline on their homepage: "a friendly place for Java greenhorns." FAQs, forums (moderated, I believe), sample code, all kinds of goodies for newbies. From what I've heard, they live up to the "friendly" claim.
Bruce Eckel's [url=http://mindview.net/Books/DownloadSites]Thinking in Java[/url] (Available online.)
Joshua Bloch's [url=http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/Author=Bloch,%20Josh]Effective Java[/url]
Bert Bates and Kathy Sierra's [url=http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0596004656?v=glance]Head First Java[/url].
James Gosling's [url=http://www.bookpool.com/sm/0321349806]The Java Programming Language[/url]. Gosling is
the creator of Java. It doesn't get much more authoratative than this.
Also, the API docs and the JLS are indispensable.
For 5.0 (a.k.a. 1.5)
http://java.sun.com/docs/books/jls/third_edition/html/j3TOC.html
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/api/
For 1.4
http://java.sun.com/docs/books/jls/second_edition/html/j.title.doc.html
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/api/
