We are working with a large retail bank on training 40-50 .Net developers to use Java. They are familiar with C# and .Net framework and have built dozens of "run the business" style apps in .Net.
We need advice on how to provide basic Java familiarity, with a focus on back end logic, security and transaction management. Back end is Spring/Hibernate, front end is Ajax (Dojo).
Are there any online, self-paced, Java courses that would be good for C#/.Net developers to get up to speed quickly?
The big challenge here is not how to teach C# programmers Java or the Java class library. It should only take them a couple of days to get up and running. No, they won't be instant experts, but they'll be writing decent code in a matter of days.
Your biggest concern should be their familiarity with frameworks like Spring and Hibernate. If they have experience working with either of these frameworks on the .NET platform, that is good news. If not, that's where a lot of their attention should be. Tutorials and sample code for either framework can easily be found on the web.
If these are ASP.NET programmers, chances are they have some familiarity with Ajax in one form or another, but that's a whole different problem from training a C# programmer to swith to the Java platform.
I recently took a few online courses at BlackBeltFactory ( http://www.blackbeltfactory.com/ ) as part of training given in a competence centre in Belgium. They're building up a series of complete courses that already include Java, Hibernate and Spring and allow you to learn from scratch. From what I understand, this includes coaching. The founders are apparently professionals that have a few good years experience with business applications.