8 Sites to Learn Java Programming for FREE in 2023

This content originally appeared on DEV Community 👩‍💻👨‍💻 and was authored by javinpaul

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Hello friends, if you want to learn Java Programming and looking for the best websites to learn Java coding for free then you have come to the right place. In the past, I have shared the Complete Java Developer RoadMap, as well as best Java courses and books, today, I am going to share free sites to learn Java Programming for free in 2023.

Being the author of a [Java blog] and programmer I often receive questions like how to improve my coding skills?,  or how do I learn to code in Java?, or I am having difficulty solving programming problems, please help, etc.

This is mostly from programmers who have just started programming or computer science graduates with a programming degree or even some programmers with a year or two in Job.

If you don't know, I have doing Java programming since last 20 years and blogging my experience since last 12 years in my blog Javarevisited, SavingsFunda, and Java67 and love to help people learning to code, particularly Java programming language.

These are also the best online platforms where you can learn Java by yourself, I mean if you want to become a self-taught Java developer. They are completely online and give you options for both video-based learning and interactive learning.

You can watch lectures and follow along, or you can read the theory and then do the practice problems to learn Java online.

Like many other things in the life, if you want to improve your coding, you need to code, code, and code - and to develop programming skill, you need to write a program, and that's where many of these programmers fail.

In 90% of cases, they simply don't write enough programs to develop programming logic and code sense. And, without too much experience at data structures and algorithms, if they attempt problems given on sites like LeetCode, HackerEarth, TopCoder, or Project Euler, they fail miserably.

To be frank, it's not easy to solve coding problems from those sites, until you have really done programming for a year or two, or even more and one of the best way to improve your coding skill is to solve basic data structures, algorithms, developing classic games like Tic,Tac, Toe, Tetris, or Moon Lander, and solving object-oriented design problems by yourself.

By the way, If you are absolutely new in the programming world, then investing some money in buying a book or joining a course on data structure and algorithms like Data Structures and Algorithms: Deep Dive Using Java on Udemy is a Good Idea.  

It may not teach you coding, but it will give you knowledge of data structure and algorithms, which is very important for any programmer.

8 Best Platforms to Learn Java Coding Online for FREE 

In this article, I am going to share with you a couple of websites and coding platforms that will help you to learn coding and programming, and that too for FREE.

The list not only includes websites where you can join free Java courses but also places where you can practice Java online, for example, CodeAbbey and CodingBat which are great places to learn Java by solving small Java programming exercises.

A few sites are mostly for Java programmers, but the problem set can be solved in any language, while the other site is language independent because it doesn't ask you to code online, instead it only check your answers with random input data.

1. Udemy

This is another popular website to learn Java and coding online. Similar to Pluralsight, it also provides both free and paid courses, but the good part is that you have a lot of choices available, and it's relatively cheaper than Pluralsight.

It also contains a lot of free courses in both Java and programming, like Java Tutorial for Complete Beginners, a whopping 767,854 students are enrolled for this course, and it's one of the best free Java courses available online.

And, if you can spend a few bucks like $10 then you can also find a lot of courses to learn Java from scratch like The Complete Java Masterclass is one of the best courses for programmers getting started with Java. This course is updated to cover both Java 11 and Java 17, two of the LTS Java releases.

If you like to learn from video courses then Udemy is the best website to learn Java online. You have a lot of options as there are multiple Java courses with different instructors and you can choose where you connect with the instructor.

2. Pluralsight

There are a lot of useful courses on Pluralsight to learn Java and coding online. You can choose the classes you like to learn at your own pace.

The site also provides a 10-day free trial, which is more than enough to get a start with both Java and Coding if you are totally focused.

I recommend Java Fundamentals: The Java Language to start learning the basics of Java programming language. Author Jim Wilson has done a great job in explaining the syntax and features of Java in this power-packed course.

Apart from that Pluralsight, also has courses to teach programming, for example, you can check out Learning To Program - Part 1: Getting Started By Scott Allen,  if you absolutely don't have any idea about programming.

3. Codegym

If you like to learn Java by building games and doing interactive programming exercises then you will love Codegym. I recently found this website when one of my reader pointed it and I was amazed with the learning material.

The best thing about CodeGym is that they give you a lot of practice and they also follow 80/20 rule where you will be reading or learning 20% of your time and 80% of time practicing what you learned.

This method works because in real life you will be using top 20% of your skill 80% of time, this true with Java as well, while Java API is very vast with hundreds of classes and third-party libraries, you will be using only 20% of Java most of the time like core Java, Collections and Multithreading.

In other words, CodeGym is like an online course but with 1200 tasks and many games which clearly makes it as one of the best places to learn Java coding.

You can learn more about it here - Codegym

They have both free and paid options while their free option is good enough to learn Java online, if you can afford, you should definitely try Codegym premium, their paid version, they are also offering 50% discount now.

And, if you want to learn more about it, you can also see my review of CodeGym platform for learning Java.

4. CodeAbbey

The first site which  I am going to share with you guys was CodeAbbey when I came across CodeAbbey, I really like their question set, because it was perfectly designed for beginners.

It's neither easy nor trivial and provides some decent practice to the first-timer. Here is the kind of question you can expect from this site :

• Maximum of array    
• Vowel Count  
• The weighted sum of digits
• Body Mass Index
• Sum of digits
• Median of Three
• Neumann's Random Generator  
• Array Checksum
• Modulo and time difference  
• Average of an array
• Array Counters
• Binary Search
• Dice Rolling

Once you start solving these programs, your programming logic will improve, and you will learn how to apply the knowledge of operators, data structure, and algorithms to solve a problem.

Slowly you will learn how to approach any problem. Once you solve the beginner's problem, you can start with intermediate and some difficult ones to test your knowledge and gain some confidence.

Remember, it's the problem-solving skill that makes you a good programmer, not just knowing all the syntax of any programming language, like C or C++. Once you learn how to code or how to program, you can solve the same problem in any programming language.

If you like books, you can also purchase a book to learn how to program, like Head First Programming, which teaches you how to code and write a program using Python language.

5. Codecademy

The popular website, which I come to know while learning JavaScript, now also has a free course to teach Java. It's one of the best interactive sites to learn Java.

It provides an online IDE or Java Editor where you can not only code but also check your program by running and debugging it.

The course is not exhaustive as those available on Pluralsight and Udemy, but given it's free, it a still one of the better resources to learn Java. Join 2,360,524people who have already taken this course

6. CodingBat

The other site I am going to share with you guys is CodingBat. This site is also an excellent resource to practice and learn to code for Java and Python programmer.

You can solve problems in either Java or Python. Just like CodeAbbey, you need to register, but that's good because you can track your progress.

It also contains beginner-level programming problems from useful topics like String, Array, Logic, and Recursion.

I really like their questions from recursion, as it's one of the confusing concepts to master. They also have problems at different difficulty levels.

Once you log in, you can select any question, and you will be asked to write code for that method in Java or python, Every program has a precise specification, often you need to implement a particular method.

Once you were done, you can run your program and test with different inputs, including boundary conditions, which are designed by CodingBat itself.

Their input set is perfect, and you will learn quickly by following why your program doesn't run on a particular input. Here are some of the questions you can expect at CodingBat :

monkeyTrouble\
You have two monkeys, a and b, and the parameters aSmile and bSmile indicate if each is smiling. We are in trouble if they are both smiling or if neither of them is smiling. Return true if we are in trouble.

monkeyTrouble(true, true) ? true\
monkeyTrouble(false, false) ? true\
monkeyTrouble(true, false) ? false

bunnyEars\
We have many bunnies, and each bunny has two big floppy ears. We want to compute the total number of ears across all the bunnies recursively (without loops or multiplication).

bunnyEars(0) ? 0\
bunnyEars(1) ? 2\
bunnyEars(2) ? 4

CodingBat also contains help and videos on both Java and Python lessons.

I am sure once you start solving programming problems on these two sites, you will learn coding faster. If you already know how to code, then these will simply improve your thinking and programming skills.

The great thing about these two sites is that their problems are not very difficult, which is one reason I am recommending these to beginners and intermediate Java programmers.

Sometimes a site with difficult programming problems discourages a young programmer. Once you start solving easy questions, your confidence will grow up, and you gradually advance towards more challenging topics and questions.

7. Test Automation U

This is another great place to learn Java online for FREE. As the name suggests this website is for automation testers but it also has a useful track to learn Java which is not only engaging but also rewarding.

I come across this site on Twitter because I follow Angie Jones, creator of this website and the first and probably the youngest woman to become a Java champion recently. If you are learning Java for test automation or not this website will surely help you to get up to speed with Java.

If you find the Java Programming track advance then you can first start with an online course like The Complete Java Masterclass or take the learn Java track on CodeCademy to build the basic concepts.

8. JetBrains Academy

This is another great place to learn Java for FREE. I recently found this site on Facebook and fell in love with it immediately. The name of JetBrains is one of the most popular and trustworthy names in the Java world as they are the one who creates IntelliJIDEA and Android Studio.

JetBrains Academy, in partnership with Hyperskill, offers interactive project-based learning combined with powerful development tools like IntelliJIDEA. This means you can execute code not just in the browser but also in your IDE, which is the tool you will use in most of your career for real-world Java development.

Their Java developer track is massive and has 29 projects covering 358 topics and over 137 hours of content. You build Java projects like Coffee Machine, Tic-Tac-Toe, SimpleChattBot, and much more. They are not completely free but you can still learn a lot of things using their trial.

Btw, JetBrains Academy also has a Python track that you can use if you want to learn Python online. It has more than 34 hours of content and a couple of projects which can you build along to learn Python better.

By the way, these sites are not for experienced programmers, as you can quickly solve all those questions, but if you like to do a quick recap and practice, then you will find them interesting as well.

If you are looking to buy a book to learn to code, then I suggest you take a look at  Head First Java 3rd Edition, the new edition is now updated to cover Java SE 8 to Java SE 17 which makes it one of the best books to learn Java in depth.

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Thanks for reading this article so far. If you know any other excellent online resources like any websites or programming platforms to learn Java Coding for FREE, especially for beginners, which you think complements these two websites, then feel free to share. Everybody loves free resources and happy learning programming.

P. S. - If you don't mind spending a few bucks for learning a valuable and in-demand skill like Java then I highly recommend you to check out The Complete Java Masterclass course by Tim Buchalaka and his team on Udemy. It's one of the most comprehensive and up-to-date courses to learn Java online.

This content originally appeared on DEV Community 👩‍💻👨‍💻 and was authored by javinpaul