People ask me what books I recommend to learn Java. And I have a few books that I thoroughly recommend, but they are not aimed at beginners.

Those that are aimed at beginners, I re-read recently and came to the conclusion that they would confuse more than help, and they don't help people become productive fast.

I wanted to write a book that gets testers started fast, is easy to follow, and has examples related to their work.

I have a companion web site for the book at javafortesters.com

Who is it for?

This book is for people who want to learn Java. Particularly people on a team that want to learn Java, but who aren't going to be coding the main Java application i.e. Testers, Managers, Business Analysts, Front End Developers, Designers, etc.

If you already know Java then this book may not be for you.

It is aimed at beginners.

I cover 'just enough' to get people writing tests and abstraction layers, but I don't really go down into a lot of detail. For example, I cover the basics of Inheritance, but don't really cover Interfaces in detail. I explain the concept of Interfaces, because we need to know it to understand Collections, but not how to write them.

Why? Because I want to cover enough to get people started, and working. I don't want to overload them. Once they are on their way, and have gained some experience. Then, when they are ready, they should have the basic knowledge to let them understand the additional concepts.

Why 'for testers'?

Java Developers coding production applications in Java need to learn Java differently from other people on the team.

Throughout my career I have written thousands of lines of Java code, but I have rarely had to compile the code into an application. Yet, when we learn Java, one of the first things we learn is 'javac' and the 'main' method.

Most of the code I write is wrapped up in a JUnit @Test method.

Everytime I have taught Java to testers or other people on the team, I start with a JUnit @Test method and show them how to run tests from the IDE.

Testers, and other people on the team use java differently, and I think we need a different order and approach to learning Java.

Source Code

You can find the source code for all examples and exercises used in the book over on github:

github.com/eviltester/javaForTestersCode

• All example code in the book is automatically pulled from the source code, so it will work.