What are the best resources for programmers to learn Java at an advanced level?

HM. The release notes and accompanying articles that go with a major release of Java usually cover the new features pretty well. Anyone who hasn't read Josh Bloch's Effective Java should. Similarly the new edition of Java Platform Performance will give you a lot of insight into the internals of Java processing. Beyond that, probably the latest edition of The Java Virtual Machine. Overall anything in the From The Source series has traditionally been very good for that particualr subsystem (eg RMI, Paralell Processing and so forth.) For J2EE and related stacks on top of Java, I don't have any good references off the top of my head, sorry.

I think below tutorials would give you a head start: https://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/reallybigindex.html - Oracle Java tutorials  that will cover almost all the topics of core java. However the tutorials even cover the advance Java topics such as JAXB/JAXP, Socket Direct Protocol, JNDI, custom networking etc. https://apexapps.oracle.com/pls/apex/f?p=44785%3A2%3A0%3A%3A%3A2%3AP2_GROUP_ID%3A1007  - If you are looking for some specific topics you can refer to Oracle By Example. Another good initiative by Oracle to teach some advance java. http://docs.oracle.com/javafx/2/get_started/jfxpub-get_started.htm - Oracle's tutorial on Java FX, if you want to create some desktop applications. https://docs.oracle.com/javaee/7/tutorial/ - Another official oracle tutorials on JavaEE 7. The tutorial will cover all the basics of Java EE architecture. https://spring.io/guides - Official spring guide that will get you started on spring. However I would recommend to buy a book if you are looking to start on spring. https://docs.jboss.org/hibernate/orm/3.3/reference/en/html/tutorial.html / https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E13224_01/wlw/docs103/guide/ormworkbench/hibernate-tutorial/tutHibernate1.html - Hibernate tutorials on Jboss and oracle site. The tutorial will give you a head start. https://javabrains.io/ - This is a good tutorial that will cover Java EE, spring and web services. These tutorials are also available on yoututbe. Apart from these you can keep an eye on https://www.coursera.org/, https://www.edx.org/,https://www.udemy.com/  and other sites like these. These sites sometime host few free advance java tutorials. http://www.tutorialspoint.com/index.htm - Another good site that will get you started on the basics of advance java concepts. All the above mentioned tutorials are good but I would recommend you to invest in the books. From my personal experience I found books to be really help full when you are trying to learn any new technology.Hope that helps.Happy learning.

I found Fowler's Patterns for Enterprise Applications Architecture pretty good reading material. http://www.amazon.com/Patterns-Enterprise-Application-Architecture-Martin/dp/0321127420

I am just going to list some skills and technologies that I think you should either know, or be able to pick up in a reasonable period of time. Some are probably not really advanced, but I will start with the basics, and work up from there. Will probably miss a lot. As always in programming, knowing the material is only half the journey, you also need to be able to use it correctly and be able to implement non-trivial features and designs. Not really concerned with books, even the best book will only give you an introduction. You have to program with it for a few years to really know it. Language basics: packages, container framework, AWT, extend vs implement, generics, exceptions, threading, reflection. Eclipse IDE obfuscation and decompiling Using a class loader Spring, Struts, Ant MVC XML, JSON J2EE and J2SE JSP, servlets Database, SQL, JDBC JNLP, Java Web Start I think if you listed experience with most of these items on your resume and could defend your understanding and ability to use the technologies in an interview, most people would consider you to be a senior developer.

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