Hi! If you are a visual type, I suggest O'Reilly's Head First series. If you are looking for a good foundation, Ivor Horton's Beginning Java 2, JDK 5 Edition (Wiley, 2005) (The current Java is the JDK 6, so it isn't the freshest, but it's a good book). There are some good books on Java for different learning strategies. This is for newcommer: Java for Artists. The Art Philosophy and Science of Object Oriented Programming (Pulp Free Press, 2006), this one is for preparation for exams: SCJP, SCJD - Complete Java 2 Certification - Study Guide, 5Ed (Sybex, 2005) - but I thing its a good one for learners. About Eclipse i didn't read book, just the manual of the Eclipse. But if you prefer books: - Professional Eclipse 3 for Java Developers (Wrox, 2005) - Eclipse Step by Step (MC Press, 2003) There is a book about using PHP in Eclipse PHPEclipse: A User Guide (Packt Publishing, 2006). About Lucene there is only one book: Lucene In Action (Manning, 2005). As i remember in a conference presentation Erik Hatcher said that the next edition will cover Solr as well. (The sad thing, that the Lucene API changed a lot since 2005, so the most examples in that book don't work with Lucene 2.2., so you should check the refresh API if something don't work.) Java tool: sorry I remembered not the correct situation. There is a java tool, but it use the HTTP methods to manage index. I remembere that it was quicker that using PHP, but you should check. There's a short tutorial: http://lucene.apache.org/solr/tutorial.html ----- Original Message ----- From: "Michael Lackhoff" <[log in to unmask]> To: <[log in to unmask]> Sent: Friday, November 23, 2007 7:44 AM Subject: [CODE4LIB] Suggestions on JAVA / Eclipse learning > Hello again, > > as mentioned in my previous post about SOLR I want to learn at least > some JAVA basics. > I have some programming background, including object orientated > programming. So I don't need stuff like "what is a variable" or "what is > inheritance" but I have never written a single line of JAVA code. > > If possible I would like to combine this learning with some introduction > to eclipse. It has the advantage that I could do all my development work > with it (since there are also plugins for Perl, HTML and what you can > think of) but all I found on Eclipse was for developers with a JAVA > background. So it would be ideal to learn both in one go... > > Any suggestions for books or online resources? > > Thanks > -Michael >