Top 10 Free Courses for Java Developers to Learn Online in 2024 - Best of Lot

Hello guys, the Internet is full of useful resources, and no matter what you want to learn, there is something useful available for free. You just need to commit your time and effort. But at the same time, it's challenging to choose from the massive sea of free tutorials and courses on the internet. If you are not careful, you will spend most of your time browsing and changing classes without learning anything. That's where a curated list helps. Curation is my hobby and passion. I love to read books and courses which allows me to curate useful resources and share them with you guys.

I have been sharing a lot of free resources like books and courses to learn popular Java technologies like Spring, Eclipse, Jenkins, Docker, etc., and today, I'll share 10 Java Programming Courses which beginners can use to learn Java for free.

In this list, even though the focus is on beginner Java courses because beginners are the ones who need most of the guidance and help,. Still, I have tried to include free courses to learn to advance Java concepts, which can be really useful for intermediate and experienced Java developers.

For example, apart from core Java, the list also includes courses on Multithreading, JDBC, Eclipse IDE, Spring Boot, REST, and Java 8 and Java 9 features, Maven, Jenkins, Eclipse IDE, and Docker.

These are some of the really important skills, tools, and technology for experienced Java developers. If you are not familiar with them, it's probably the right time to pick them up to give boost your career and skills.

10 Best Free Online Courses for Java Developers in 2024

In the past, I have shared free courses to learn major programming languages like C++, Python, JavaScript, Ruby, PHP, Scala, and Kotlin.  If you want to learn those programming languages and looking for some free resources, like books, courses, and tutorials to start your journey, then you can take a look at them.

Anyway, without any further ado, here is my list of 10 free Java courses for beginner and experienced Java developers with 2 to 3 years of experience.

1. Java Programming: Beginner to Guru [Free Udemy Course]

This is one of the best free Java courses you can find online. If you want to learn Java programming and development from scratch in 2024 then you should join this free Java course on Udemy. It's completely free and you just need an Udemy account to enroll in this course. 

One of the shortcomings of free Java courses is that most of them are not up-to-date, well, you can't get everything, but fortunately, this one is updated to Java 11, not the latest Java version but the last LTS release

You will learn Java from scratch using IntelliJ IDEA on Mac, Ubuntu, and Windows. Created by John Thompson, author of Spring Framework 6: Beginner to Guru this 2.5-hour-long  course is perfect for people with no programming experience wishing to become a Java developer in 2024

2. Spring Boot 3 Restful Web Services Tutorial - Free Course

If you want to learn how to build RESTful webservices in Java using Spring Boot framework then you will love this free course on Udemy. This free course is created by Ramesh Fadatare of Javaguides who also have impressive Spring Boot and Microservices course on Udemy. 

This 1 hour 22 minute free course is actually as good as any paid course and what I like most is the clear explanation of complex topic and project based work. In this course, you will build REST API's with Spring Boot, Spring Data JPA, Hibernate, MySQL for Employee Management Project using IntelliJ IDEA as IDE.

Along the way, you will learn several useful skills like REST, Web services, Spring Framework, Spring Boot, IDEA, Hibernate, JPA and much more. Talking about social proof, more than 21K people have already joined this course and it has on average 4.3 rating which is quite amazing. 

If you like the Ramesh teaching style you can also explore his  other courses particularly Spring 6 & Spring Boot 3 for Beginners (Includes 5 Projects) which is great for both beginners and experienced Java programmers. 

3. Java Tutorial for Complete Beginners [Udemy Free Course]

This is the most popular free Java course on Udemy. It probably has a first-mover advantage, but at the same time, the quality of the course is quite good.

If you are a beginner at programming or know a programming language but want to learn Java, then you can enroll in this course. It's free, and I guess always remain free on Udemy.

Talking about social proof, this is the most popular Java course on Udemy with more than 1.4 million students. It's been free for quite a long time but if you are interested, you should join sooner than later before it turns into a paid Udemy course. 

If you are learning Java by yourself, this course is your best companion.

4. Java Multithreading [Free Course]

This is one of the best free Java Multithreading courses on Udemy. In fact, I have not found another free Multithreading course that can match this course. 

Given Multithreading is an essential part of Java programming and probably the single most important feature which separates a good Java developer from an average Java developer. 

There is a high demand for Java developers who can write robust and concurrent code, and they also get paid very high salaries.

If you genuinely want to excel in the Java world, multi-threading and concurrency is the one area you need to concur, and this course will help you to do that free of cost.

5. Practice Java by Building Projects [Udemy Course]

There is no better way to learn a new programming language than building projects. This is what I called active learning, you just cannot learn by simply reading books or watching online courses until you start writing code and creating projects. This makes your mind work actively.

You get familiar with real-world requirements, and then you find answers for yourself based upon whatever you have learned. In short, use this course for more engaged and project-based learning. A highly recommended this course for anyone learning Java.

Btw, this course is not free anymore, the instructor has converted this into a paid course on Udemy which means you need to pay a minimum of $9.9 to join this course. Since I didn't find any other free project-based Java course online, I have kept it here. 

6. Java Database Connection: JDBC and MySQL [Free Udemy Course]

This is is one of the best free Udemy courses to learn JDBC and I highly recommend every Java developer, both beginners, and experienced developers to join this course. 

Since JDBC is an integral part of Java API because most of the real-world applications you will create in Java will have to work with a database.

Good knowledge of JDBC is required even if you are using advanced frameworks like Hibernate, JPA, or iBatis and this course will provide you that. It uses MySQL as an example database as it's also free and teaches you how to work with a database in Java using JDBC.

Overall, a perfect course for both beginners and intermediate Java developers looking to brush up their JDBC skills.

7. Master Object Oriented Programming Concepts [Free Course to learn OOP]

This is another beginner-level course for Java developers to learn Object-Oriented Programming basics. For a Java developer, a strong knowledge of Object-Oriented programming fundamentals like Abstraction, Encapsulation, Inheritance, Composition is mandatory and this free Java course will teach you that. 

You will learn about Class and objects, Constructors, Overloading and Overriding, Static vs Dynamic Binding, Code generalization using Inheritance, Interfaces, and most importantly learn how to develop loosely coupled code using the interface. 

If you are a computer science graduate or programmer coming from C, C++, C#, or Python background, then you can use this course to quickly get up-to-speed with Java programming. It's a short, 2.5-hour course not very comprehensive, but provides a nice overview from a beginner's perspective.

8. Eclipse Tutorial For Beginners: Learn Java IDE in 10 Steps  [Free Course]

There is no doubt that IntelliJ IDEA is quickly winning the war against Eclipse to replace it as the most popular Java IDEs, but Eclipse is still an excellent IDE for Java developers to start with. It's FREE and you don't need to pay a license fee, which is required for the full edition of IntelliJ IDEA.

As a Java developer, a good knowledge of your IDE is a must and this course will teach you how to work with Eclipse efficiently. 

A highly recommended for any programmer starting with Java development and this free Eclipse course from Udemy will help you to learn Eclipse in 10 easy steps. 

This course has been created by Ranga Karnam, author of several awesome Spring and Java courses and you will not only learn things like how to run and debug Java programs in Eclipse, but also advanced Eclipse features for refactoring code, using Git and Maven, and many powerful Eclipse shortcuts to improve productivity. 

9. Java Programming, Lambda, and more (Java 13, 12, 11, 10, 9,8) [FREE]

This is an excellent course to get familiar with some exciting new features introduced in Java 8 to Java 13, like Lambda Expression, Stream API, Java's Module System, Improvement on Process and Stream API, Introduction of static factory methods for creating an Immutable collection, String in switch case, var for local variables, Text Blocks, and many others.

This 12.5 hours long free Java course is the best you can get at free of cost. If you already know Java and just want to update your knowledge to new Java features, then this is the right course for you. 

More importantly, it's free, and you will find all the important new Java features in one place.

10. Java Design Patterns and Architecture  [Free Udemy Course]

Design patterns are an important skill for an experienced Java developer and this free Udemy course will help you to learn design patterns in Java. This is another intermediate-level course for Java programmers or anyone who wants to learn common design patterns in Java and know when to apply them to produce quality code. 

It's a free online course but packed with 4.5 hours of training material, which is very good for a free Udemy course. You will not only learn about popular GOF patterns like Factory, Observer, Facade, and Adapter pattern but also Model View Controller (MVC), Data Access Object (DAO), and Software design in general. 

If you want to become an experienced Java developer then you should spend some time learning design patterns in 2024 and this free design pattern course is absolutely best to join. As I said, it's completely free, and you just have an Udemy account to join this course. 

This is also the most popular free design pattern course on Udemy and trusted by thousands of experienced Java developers to level up their skills. 

11. HANDS-ON DOCKER for JAVA Developers [Free Udemy Course for Docker]

Docker is becoming an increasingly important tool in the world of cloud-based applications and it is not just important for a Java developer but also for any programmer or software developer who wants to create and deploy applications on cloud platforms like AWS, GCP, and Azure. 

As the title suggests this is a completely hands-on course and packaged with 4.5 hours of practical training materials and demos. You will learn not only learn how to build, ship, and run Java applications using Docker but also how to build spring framework-based apps using Docker. 

The best thing about this free docker course for Java developers is that all the lectures come with hands-on labs. If you are interested in cloud-based Java development and leveraging containers for setting up new instances quickly, then this is the perfect course for you to start with.

That's all about some of the 10 free Java Programming courses for beginners and experienced developers. If you want to learn Java, then these courses are more than enough to make you a Java expert. To learn quickly and fast, start with one course and then explore other courses to master individual parts, like multi-threading, JDBC, Eclipse, Java 8 and Java 13 changes, Docker, Design Patterns, and others.


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Thanks for reading this article so far. If you like these best free Java Programming and Development courses then please share them with your friends and colleagues. If you have any questions or feedback then please drop a note.

P.S. - If you don't mind paying a few bucks for learning a valuable skill like Java then you may want to see this list of 10 Best Courses to learn Java Programming as well. I have carefully chosen the best Java courses so that you can learn all core Java concepts in depth. Most of the courses on those can be bought in as little as $10 so they are also very affordable.