Post by themattfellaPost by LewI would start with the Java tutorials on the Oracle website and work from there.
Yes, I found http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/index.html, and it's
pretty bad. Not what I would call textbook quality.
The tutorials themselves are not what I would call pedagogical. They're
not really great at teaching. They do make an excellent reference and
have great examples for when you want specifics.
If you need to learn from the beginning, getting a beginners book is a
good idea. So is taking a class. That's what I did. You can learn by
doing, but I find this frustrating because you're constantly running
into walls where you don't know how to accomplish basic goals, and
you're constantly aware that your initial efforts are sub-standard.
For books, I recommend O'Reilly's Learning Java, third edition. The
WROX series is also good. There's the javapassion.com online website
where you can take courses. I found them to be really well organized
and useful for getting yourself over the initial learning hump. I
really hate fumbling around and only half knowing what I'm doing, so an
organized online class worked very well for me.
There's also local community colleges, and you could get a group
together of interested parties to all learn the language together. This
group can help a bit with the latter. If you post up programs you have
written, you can often get useful critiques about different ways to
accomplish your goals.
Good luck.