Rating: 
Summary: Never have I spent so much time learning so little
Review: I am now at day 16 of the 21 days. Over the past 30 years I have taught myself COBOL, FORTRAN, QBasic, Visual Basic, Access, IBM Assembly language and several different opperating system languages. Never have spent so much time learning so little. These authors don't try to build a foundation that can be expanded. They present unexplained example after unexplained example. I belive the authors have never worked in java, I belive they have only compiled books on it. This book only shows how confused the authors are on the subject. I believe that they don't have a foundation for surely if they did, they would have presented it.
Rating:
Summary: Obsolete and confusing
Review: This book was not a serious attempt to upgrade the 1996 version of this book which covered Java 1.0. It appears to be an attempt on making quick money by adding a few comments about Java 2. Many of the important aspects such as event handling use totally obsoleted methods from java 1.0. Event hanldling was pretty much replaced in Java 1.1, yet this book refers to Java 1.0 even though this book is supposed to be about Java 2 !! It caused me a great deal of trouble, since I started writing programs using obsolete methods. Don't waste your money on this.
Rating:
Summary: Beginners! Do not get this book!!!!!
Review: I couldn't hold on to my patience on day 4 when the book never explains about the code example (e.g. LISTING 4.6 on page 108). Shame on you... How can you not explain about the code properly (esp. what the line 8 does) expect to sell the book!!! International Best Seller?????????I seriously and honestly believe that the authors need to re-write the entire book....Thanks Han
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent introduction to Java
Review: I think this is a great book. Clear, well-written, and very thorough treatment, an excellent introduction to Java for the beginner. I highly recommend it. (just don't think you're going to master something as rich as Java in 21 days)
Rating: 
Summary: if you are new to OOP, this book is NOT for you
Review: There are two big problems with this book. First, it does not give you any practice excercises that you can do on your own. Second, it does a poor job of explaining the lines of code. If I had not highlighted the first few pages of the book, I would definately have taken it back to the store. If I rated this book "one star" I'd feel ashamed for wasting $30. If I gave it a "three stars" rating, I'd definitely be lying.
Rating: 
Summary: The writing style would make Santa Claus toss his cookies.
Review: I have no quarrel with the teaching structure, examples, and formal content of this latest Laura Lemay book; it reflects the excellent teaching approach of all her books. The cutsey writing style, which I have to assume is due to her co-author Rogers Cadenhead since none of her other books is afflicted by it, is enough to make Santa Claus toss his cookies. Please please dump this in future books. I need the new material badly enough to use this book, but the gag impulse is very high.
Rating:
Summary: Very bad for beginners
Review: The problem with this book was that they never actually told you what each line of code did, they told you to type it in and move on. Also, they expect you to remember this over a span of 21 days. I sat and memorized the first day for about 2 hours beforefinally hopping off to bed and waking up to realize I had forgotten the code because they never have you do excercises! And the author obviously was basing this off of C++ because everything was put in examples of the differences between C++ and Java. I don't want to bother learning C++! Otherwise I would not have bought this book(now regretting I did).
Rating: 
Summary: Buckle up beginners, and say OOPs
Review: This book moves too fast for beginners in Object Oriented Programming. If you're going to pop right into OOP, get a slower paced book to start with, and then move onto this. Laura Lemay is an awesome author (Sams PERL in 21) and Rogers puts a nice monkey humor twist on it
Rating:
Summary: Probably a good book for OOP literates
Review: I would not recommend this book at all for developers not exposed to Object Oriented Programming. It gives the feeling of suddenly being made to stand in the middle of an Interstate Highway. The concept of OOP has been very poorly dealt with. Before one realisizes, the terms like Classes, libraries, packages, instances are thrown at the reader. For beginners, there is a good book by "QUE" called "Using Java 2".
Rating:
Summary: Would be great if it had examples
Review: I would have loved this book, except there are no exercises, and the standard Sam's "BUG BUSTERS" are missing as well.
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