I'm doing BSc Software Engineering, we are using a book called "Java by Dissection" to learn Java. Java is a lot more difficult than VB and can easily be decompiled but apparantly it is the most employable language. You can get notes on it off a lot of university sites o teach you the basics of the language but without a book and example codes you will not be able to learn the language. Don't go out and buy a big, thick book because they are generally harder to learn from.