Java Practice Resources

Learning to program is like learning a musical instrument, a martial art, or any other skill or sport. After gaining the initial mastery over concepts and syntax, practice is key in reinforcing the knowledge as well as building on it by attempting problems of increasing challenge.

Here is a curated list of free online resources and books that you can borrow from the library or buy. These have programming exercises of varying levels and some also have solutions. Note that this list is more geared for practicing Java and exploring it further rather than learning it from scratch.

  • Udemy Course Decoding Computer Science A is a comprehensive course meant primarily for high school students looking for a free way to prepare for the AP Computer Science test.
  • codingbat.com This is a project by Nick Parlante, a computer science lecturer at Stanford. The site has live coding problems to build coding skill in Python or Java. Create a free account to save your work. Solutions are not provided in the website but it has some summary of concepts and videos explaining the trickier problems.
  • CodeHS practice has problems to help students gain a stronger understanding of basic programming skills. It is a great resource for additional practice on a specific topic or for students looking for an extra challenge.
  • Learn Java the Hard Way From the website: “covers just the basics of Java but it covers them deeply, with plenty of complete working examples and the explanations that the other books didn’t even think to write down. You won’t have a working Android app by chapter 5. But you will learn how to code, and you will understand every line of code that you are writing.”
    The author also maintains a website ProgrammingByDoing that has practice assignments for beginners.

If you need help such as deciding which resource to start with, or are looking for a different kind of practice program set, send email to code@evcomputing.com. I would be happy to help.

Have fun coding! Seeing the program instantly output what you instruct it to can get addictive!

– Fatima Dash