My mums boyfriend lent me a java book to try and teach me it. Its called "Java in a nutshell". Also is there any small size program like NetBeans that is visual for Java.

I'm not quite sure what you're asking here. I haven't read Java in a Nutshell but generally the entire publishing line of books are atleast good, so you're bound to learn something from reading it. Your second question is? Are you asking for a Java IDE? Netbeans is a very good, free, up to date IDE. You can get that at http://java.sun.com/ and if you're looking for other IDEs, search the forum, we had a thread for it a while back.

[quote author=Hostile link=board=34;threadid=5513;start=0#msg46740 date=1078083435]
I'm not quite sure what you're asking here. I haven't read Java in a Nutshell but generally the entire publishing line of books are atleast good, so you're bound to learn something from reading it. Your second question is? Are you asking for a Java IDE? Netbeans is a very good, free, up to date IDE. You can get that at http://java.sun.com/ and if you're looking for other IDEs, search the forum, we had a thread for it a while back.
[/quote]

While i know it sounds dumb but if your just starting using java you probably don't want to make any gui's yet. You would want to learn the console work with it. You also should pick up a book on threads. If you want todo any work with gui's it's usually a good thing to have a backround knowledge in threads. You most likly will need them for something at some time or another..

From that you can move to gui's I'm not saying the gui editor's are bad it's just you wont learn as much and you are going to run into road blocks..

A good book that i used to start was .An introduction to object oriented programming by nino and hosch.. granted most will find it boring but it really has alot of good examples and oyu can learn alot. Although I warn you it can be fairly pricey it's not your common 20 dollar book.

I just got this java book from my teacher at school.

It's called [u]"Java How to program: Fifth Edition"[/u] by Deitel.

It comes with a cd, has anyone used this book before, and is it any good?

[quote author=SNiFFeR link=board=34;threadid=5513;start=0#msg49118 date=1079133851]
I just got this java book from my teacher at school.

It's called [u]"Java How to program: Fifth Edition"[/u] by Deitel.

It comes with a cd, has anyone used this book before, and is it any good?
[/quote]

You can go to www.amazon.com or some other online book store and look up reviews.