What books should be on the bookshelf of EVERY Java programmer, no matter what specific technologies they are working on?

The two that come to my mind are

Thinking in Java
Java Concurrency in Practice

What else am I missing?

Views: 385

Reply to This

Replies to This Discussion

Will add one more to my list:

Effective Java
"Thinking in Java" would have been on my list. I'll have to take a look at "Effective Java".

Java Books

Beginner:

  • Head First Java, 2nd Edition
  • Thinking in Java (4th Edition)
  • Think Java
  • Introduction to Java by Sedgewick
  • Java in a Nutshell
  • Core Java Volume I--Fundamentals (9th Edition) (Core Series): Cay S. Horstmann
  • Java How To Program (late objects) by Paul Deitel, Harvey Deitel

Intermediate:

  • Effective Java (2nd Edition): Joshua Bloch
  • Java Performance: Charlie Hunt, Binu John
  • Head First Servlets and JSP
  • SCJP by Kathy and Sierra
  • Java - The Complete Reference by Herbert Schildt.
  • Java Concurrency in Practice
  • Java Performance
  • The Java Programming Language, 4th Edition

Advanced:

  • Java Puzzlers : Traps, Pitfalls, And Corner Cases

Reply to Discussion

RSS

Happy 10th year, JCertif!

Notes

Welcome to Codetown!

Codetown is a social network. It's got blogs, forums, groups, personal pages and more! You might think of Codetown as a funky camper van with lots of compartments for your stuff and a great multimedia system, too! Best of all, Codetown has room for all of your friends.

When you create a profile for yourself you get a personal page automatically. That's where you can be creative and do your own thing. People who want to get to know you will click on your name or picture and…
Continue

Created by Michael Levin Dec 18, 2008 at 6:56pm. Last updated by Michael Levin May 4, 2018.

Looking for Jobs or Staff?

Check out the Codetown Jobs group.

 

Enjoy the site? Support Codetown with your donation.



InfoQ Reading List

Google’s TurboQuant Compression May Support Faster Inference, Same Accuracy on Less Capable Hardware

Google Research unveiled TurboQuant, a novel quantization algorithm that compresses large language models’ Key-Value caches by up to 6x. With 3.5-bit compression, near-zero accuracy loss, and no retraining needed, it allows developers to run massive context windows on significantly more modest hardware than previously required. Early community benchmarks confirm significant efficiency gains.

By Bruno Couriol

Presentation: Empower Your Developers: How Open Source Dependencies Risk Management Can Unlock Innovation

Celine Pypaert discusses the ubiquitous nature of open-source software and shares a blueprint for securing modern applications. She explains how to prioritize high-risk vulnerabilities using exploitability data, the role of Software Bill of Materials (SBOM), and the importance of bridging the gap between DevOps and Security through clear accountability and automated governance.

By Celine Pypaert

Zendesk Says AI Makes Code Abundant, Shifting the Bottleneck to “Absorption Capacity”

Zendesk argues that GenAI shifts the bottleneck in software delivery from writing code to “absorption capacity”, which is the organisation’s ability to define problems clearly, integrate changes into the wider system, and turn implementation into reliable value. As code becomes abundant, architectural coherence, review capacity, and delivery flow become the main constraints.

By Eran Stiller

Claude Code Used to Find Remotely Exploitable Linux Kernel Vulnerability Hidden for 23 Years

Anthropic researcher Nicholas Carlini used Claude Code to find a remotely exploitable heap buffer overflow in the Linux kernel's NFS driver, undiscovered for 23 years. Five kernel vulnerabilities have been confirmed so far. Linux kernel maintainers report that AI bug reports have recently shifted from slop to legitimate findings, with security lists now receiving 5-10 valid reports daily.

By Steef-Jan Wiggers

Article: Using AWS Lambda Extensions to Run Post-Response Telemetry Flush

At Lead Bank, synchronous telemetry flushing caused intermittent exporter stalls to become user-facing 504 gateway timeouts. By leveraging AWS Lambda's Extensions API and goroutine chaining in Go, flush work is moved off the response path, returning responses immediately while preserving full observability without telemetry loss.

By Melvin Philips

© 2026   Created by Michael Levin.   Powered by

Badges  |  Report an Issue  |  Terms of Service