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
>