So, you have decided on the technology and the goal. What's next?
Choose 2-3 main sources of Java knowledge, as well as a dozen additional ones. But don’t forget to “Google” if something is not clear. First of all, you need to learn Java Core - the basis of the language, you can already build on it. It's time to think about how exactly you will study. On your own or with a mentor? A mentor is great, but it’s unlikely that anyone will bother and teach you for free. And if it’s paid... A good developer’s time is worth a lot. You don’t need a bad one - what will he teach you? However, if you have a person who is ready to advise you, enlist his support. Should I take a Java course? Many people see face-to-face courses as their main source of knowledge. There are a lot of them now, but it’s difficult to find worthy ones among them. If they are in your city, then most likely they are either very expensive or completely free. The second are courses offered by companies. There are no such courses for complete beginners: they are designed for those who have a solid knowledge of Java Core (and we are just about to learn it), and in order to get into them you need to pass tests. The courses undergo a very strict screening process, and the company’s best graduates are enrolled in their staff. Now let's wash the bones of expensive Java courses. If you're lucky and have a great, hands-on teacher, they make sense. However, the price in this case will be very high. And one more thing: will this mentor be able to pay enough attention to your code personally? Is not a fact. In recent years, a lot of affordable courses have appeared; they will cost the student about $100 per month. Let's say you decide to go to them, what kind of specialist teacher is waiting for you there? Reflections on this topic again drive us to DOU: go there and evaluate the salaries of Java developers again. Most likely, you understand that it is not a junior who should teach programmers, but at least a “simply” Software Engineer. The average salary, for example, for a Kyiv specialist of this level is $2,000. Let's say there are 20 people in the group. This in itself is not very good; it puts too much burden on the teacher: he simply will not be able to physically pay attention to the code of each student. Most often, a study group consists of a dozen students. Together they pay $1,000 a month. The school that conducts the courses, in addition to the specialist, must pay for the rent of premises, equipment, and utility bills. And it is advisable to earn at least something (it is unlikely that you will find many philanthropists at paid schools). In the best case scenario, the teacher will get $500. At the same time, he spends 2-3 evenings a week on lectures and a lot more time checking problems. In theory, to learn to program, a person must write programs every day, at least 5 times a week. How much code will one student generate in a week? How about ten? A conscientious teacher should check all this and advise the student what is right and what is wrong. This is a waste of time. This leads us to the conclusion that hiring a good specialist for inexpensive courses is absolutely unprofitable. In the best case scenario, Once in a blue moon, as they say “they”, or “when the cancer whistles on the mountain”, as they say here, you will find a “fan” who really likes not only programming, but also teaching. Therefore, he found himself such a not very profitable part-time job. Not for the money, but for the fun. The next option is online courses, paid or free. Most paid online courses are the same as “face-to-face” ones, only lectures are held via the Internet. The disadvantages are almost identical - not the best teachers, very little time is devoted to the student’s practical training and checking his code. But you can use free courses as additional sources. They can be found, for example, on Youtube - they are video tutorials. If you know English, try to find a couple of courses on Western resources, for example, Coursera. Good Java video tutorials on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLY4rE9dstrJzKUZHdGgECOjJLaZBcUdCC For beginners from almost a beginner: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCK5d3n3kfkzlArMccS0TTXA Another course, a little unstructured, but many topics are covered not bad: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCg1x1VDcSzviGGH995gHnjw When you get a little more comfortable with programming, you can watch some topics here: https://habrahabr.ru/company/golovachcourses/blog/218841/ https://habrahabr .ru/company/golovachcourses/blog/215275/ These articles provide a training plan (which may be useful) and links to recordings of video lectures of offline courses. Somewhat tedious, but sometimes useful, there is a ton of information.
Online Java Courses for Beginners
In English, everything is designed for those who have not yet programmed. http://courses.caveofprogramming.com/courses/java-for-complete-beginners https://www.coursera.org/learn/java-programming https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-programming- java-part-1-uc3mx-it-1-1x-0 And here’s one catch... There are a lot of courses and videos, you can learn a lot of useful things from them. However, when learning independently, one “but” arises, a very important “but”. The fact is that the most important thing in programming is to program, that is, to write programs, and not to study theory. When studying independently, you will have to select tasks for yourself in order to learn certain principles. It's not easy for a beginner. Let's say you found a source of exercises: some books and free courses contain the conditions of the tasks. Great, let's go decide!... And here lies the biggest difficulty: who will check the correctness of the solution? You might be surprised, but even if the program runs and produces the correct answer, this does not mean that it works correctly! It may be a sweet illusion. What to do? New technologies and the World Wide Web know the answer to this question. And this answer is http://javarush.ru
Interactive Java courses with automatic task checking
We have developed the coolest course for learning Java. And many already know what it is called - JavaRush. We are proud of him, because he is one of the newbies like you who are confused and ask the question “what to do, where to go, there is so much information around!” helps make programmers ready for their first job. The most important “features” of the course:
It has a thoughtful structure. Since it was created by a practitioner who is well versed in the realities of the market, what you need to know and be able to do, only the most important things are selected in the course and in the right order! This is very important for a beginner. For you, probably, too, since you are reading this article and trying to understand how to act.
The course consists of 80% practical tasks. During your training you will have to solve more than 1200 problems. What are the types of tasks in JavaRush:
1. Small “training” exercises to reinforce what has been learned in lectures. 2. Tricky tasks for growth. In terms of complexity, they do not differ from consolidation problems, but are specially placed in the course earlier than a certain piece of theory necessary to solve them. This mobilizes and forces a person to Google and look for the missing puzzle of the theory. Everything is like in real work. 3. Puzzle. These guys make you use your head full blast. You need to find not a theory for the solution, but the solution itself, the algorithm. In short, think carefully. These are like quick-witted tasks or advanced tasks from textbooks. 4. Mini-projects. Useful large tasks broken down into subtasks to understand how large projects are developed. You yourself will make several games and useful programs that can be used in real life and modified.
And - most importantly - the course includes automatic verification of the correctness of decisions! You can solve problems on the course page or in the IDE (integrated development environment, if you don’t know what that is yet, you will soon). Moreover, this check occurs in a matter of seconds. This is simply a huge advantage of JavaRush!
The course is in Russian and the lectures in it are presented in the form of a text quest, in which you will move from level to level, increasing your skills - it won’t be boring!
The course provides links to useful additional materials, but the Googling skill is also deliberately upgraded.
Over the 4 years of its existence, a huge community has formed around JavaRush. In it, people discuss tasks, solutions, problems, and share information.
Special website for solving and discussing problems: http://help.javarush.ru/
The main course consists of 40 levels, 10 of them are completely free. During the first stage of training, you will understand whether JavaRush is right for you, so no one will sell you a “pig in a poke”, you will know exactly what you are buying. In addition, the price of the entire course is very affordable. You will pay the same amount for two months of training on “cheap full-time courses”. Link to course subscriptions with prices.
After completing the course (or most of it), you can sign up for an internship - this is joint work on a real serious project. They take place regularly, and you don’t have to move anywhere to do this. Successful completion of an internship is a beautiful and not empty line in your resume with a link to the finished project.
Detailed article about JavaRush - https://cdn.javarush.com/images/article/155cea79-acfd-4968-9361-ad585e939b82/original.png24.html
Read the first part of the article here
Read the third part of the article here . Read the fourth part of the article here .
A mentor is great, but it’s unlikely that anyone will bother and teach you for free. And if it’s paid... A good developer’s time is worth a lot. You don’t need a bad one - what will he teach you? However, if you have a person who is ready to advise you, enlist his support. Should I take a Java course? Many people see face-to-face courses as their main source of knowledge. There are a lot of them now, but it’s difficult to find worthy ones among them. If they are in your city, then most likely they are either very expensive or completely free. The second are courses offered by companies. There are no such courses for complete beginners: they are designed for those who have a solid knowledge of Java Core (and we are just about to learn it), and in order to get into them you need to pass tests. The courses undergo a very strict screening process, and the company’s best graduates are enrolled in their staff. Now let's wash the bones of expensive Java courses. 
If you're lucky and have a great, hands-on teacher, they make sense. However, the price in this case will be very high. And one more thing: will this mentor be able to pay enough attention to your code personally? Is not a fact. In recent years, a lot of affordable courses have appeared; they will cost the student about $100 per month. Let's say you decide to go to them, what kind of specialist teacher is waiting for you there? Reflections on this topic again drive us to DOU: go there and evaluate the salaries of Java developers again. Most likely, you understand that it is not a junior who should teach programmers, but at least a “simply” Software Engineer. The average salary, for example, for a Kyiv specialist of this level is $2,000. Let's say there are 20 people in the group. This in itself is not very good; it puts too much burden on the teacher: he simply will not be able to physically pay attention to the code of each student. Most often, a study group consists of a dozen students. Together they pay $1,000 a month. The school that conducts the courses, in addition to the specialist, must pay for the rent of premises, equipment, and utility bills. And it is advisable to earn at least something (it is unlikely that you will find many philanthropists at paid schools). In the best case scenario, the teacher will get $500. At the same time, he spends 2-3 evenings a week on lectures and a lot more time checking problems. In theory, to learn to program, a person must write programs every day, at least 5 times a week. How much code will one student generate in a week? How about ten? A conscientious teacher should check all this and advise the student what is right and what is wrong. This is a waste of time. This leads us to the conclusion that hiring a good specialist for inexpensive courses is absolutely unprofitable. In the best case scenario, Once in a blue moon, as they say “they”, or “when the cancer whistles on the mountain”, as they say here, you will find a “fan” who really likes not only programming, but also teaching. Therefore, he found himself such a not very profitable part-time job. Not for the money, but for the fun. The next option is online courses, paid or free. 
Most paid online courses are the same as “face-to-face” ones, only lectures are held via the Internet. The disadvantages are almost identical - not the best teachers, very little time is devoted to the student’s practical training and checking his code. But you can use free courses as additional sources. They can be found, for example, on Youtube - they are video tutorials. If you know English, try to find a couple of courses on Western resources, for example, Coursera. Good Java video tutorials on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLY4rE9dstrJzKUZHdGgECOjJLaZBcUdCC For beginners from almost a beginner: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCK5d3n3kfkzlArMccS0TTXA Another course, a little unstructured, but many topics are covered not bad: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCg1x1VDcSzviGGH995gHnjw When you get a little more comfortable with programming, you can watch some topics here: https://habrahabr.ru/company/golovachcourses/blog/218841/ https://habrahabr .ru/company/golovachcourses/blog/215275/ These articles provide a training plan (which may be useful) and links to recordings of video lectures of offline courses. Somewhat tedious, but sometimes useful, there is a ton of information.
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