I took Java in college and did extremely well in the one semester I could afford. I haven't touched Java since, but I want to get back into it (almost entirely because of Android, admittedly). Anyone have a recommendation for a java book to procure for my self-education?
I assume you know its very difficult to recommend books on Android specifically (or iPhone... or anything that "rapidly changes"). As soon as a book is written a big chunk of it ends up being obsolete. That doesn't apply so much to strict Java but yeah. I actually find Java is one of the few languages that's documented fairly well online (and combined with Eclipse which is a lovely IDE, it's really quite pleasant to work with). I always used to be pointed in the direction of this whenever lecturers didn't feel like doing their job, and there are many others like it. Mind you I've never attempted anything massively complex (e.g. Minecraft). I've a program that attempts to get rid of wasted space in sprite sheets - that's about as far as I've gone with Java. There's a reason I'm not a Tech Member.
Core Java: Thinking in Java Effective Java (I haven't actually read this, but I've heard good things). Design Patterns (not java specific but anybody considering a career as a developer should read this). Beginning Java 2 - I bought this many moons ago. It's based on JDK5 so it's quite out of date (not sure if there's a second/third edition) but the fundamentals haven't changed. Enterprise stuff: Java Enterprise in a Nutshell Struts 2 (one of the most popular web frameworks - for good reason). Spring Manning books are quite good, imo. Also, Wrox/Apress have been getting some bad press recently (no pun intended) but the content is usually solid. Also, if you need any help with anything specific, feel free to drop me a PM and I'll try to help if I can.
Thanks alot for the recommendations Glitch (and you Black Squirrel for chiming in too!). I'm gonna educate myself as well as I can on the basics and then try to port progressively more complicated things with source code to bone up. That's probably the point at which I'll be taking you up on that offer! So thanks again.
I was gonna say that same book. Any Java developer should have that book as a reference. Also you could try the tutorials at http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/index.html to get you a refresher on java.