Rating: 
Summary: I found this book to be an excellent start...
Review: Although I had some previous scripting experience, I am still basically a beginning programmer. However, I found it easy to grasp the basics of Java using this book. If you are new to programming and want to grasp the basics of Java, I do recommend this book...
Rating:
Summary: I found this book to be an excellent start...
Review: Although I had some previous scripting experience, I am still basically a beginning programmer. However, I found it easy to grasp the basics of Java using this book. If you are new to programming and want to grasp the basics of Java, I do recommend this book...
Rating:
Summary: 24 hours of Pure Java Education
Review: Before I read this book I was very unexperienced with Java. After reading it I found that I could write small applications and some applets. This was a tremendous leap for me and now I am contimplating on buying the Teach yourself Java in 21 days book. Some code errors exist but the online documantation is up to date and very helpful. I recommend this book for a beginner intrested in Java. This is not a boring, lecture clustered, book. The author does a fine job of keeping the readers attention. For those with some Java experience, this would be mostly review, but none-the-less a good book. By best reguards to Mr. Cadenhead, the author.
Rating: 
Summary: allow me to clear it all up for you
Review: BEGINNING PROGRAMMERS READ AND LEARN...
...this is not a programming for dummies book. The cover does not say "learning to program for people who have NEVER wrote a single line of code before" The cover says "Java 2" and based on that I thought the book was almost very good. I am a C++ guy transforming to Java, and I can see how this book would be very difficult for someone who has never punched out code before. If you want to learn to program you need to buy a book that says "learning to program" in no paticular language, the language is irrelavent, they're all the same at the beginning level. The reason I say "almost a great book" is because he does have a tendancy to give example code in chapters and in the example code are lines of code that are a complete mistery and I hate it when instructors do that. Other than that, if you have ANY other previous programming experiance, this is the book for you. It will have you up and running with Java 2 in no time.
Rating:
Summary: allow me to clear it all up for you
Review: BEGINNING PROGRAMMERS READ AND LEARN...
...this is not a programming for dummies book. The cover does not say "learning to program for people who have NEVER wrote a single line of code before" The cover says "Java 2" and based on that I thought the book was almost very good. I am a C++ guy transforming to Java, and I can see how this book would be very difficult for someone who has never punched out code before. If you want to learn to program you need to buy a book that says "learning to program" in no paticular language, the language is irrelavent, they're all the same at the beginning level. The reason I say "almost a great book" is because he does have a tendancy to give example code in chapters and in the example code are lines of code that are a complete mistery and I hate it when instructors do that. Other than that, if you have ANY other previous programming experiance, this is the book for you. It will have you up and running with Java 2 in no time.
Rating:
Summary: Decent book for programming beginner
Review: Good book for someone new to programming in general. If you have worked with object-based or object-oriented languages already, aim higher, perhaps to Just Java from the Java series. This is a good book for someone with little to no programming experience.
Rating: 
Summary: Unclear in some important areas
Review: I agree with a spotlight post that said the author skimmed over difficult areas and spent too much time on easy areas. I am a beginner but have some experience in JavaScript and VB, but I found myself ready to throw this book out the window and burn it at times. How to use boolean operators are not explained, threaded programs are not given enough detail, and the best part of the language, applets, are hardly mentioned throughout the book! I don't recommend this book to others.
Rating: 
Summary: A Hard to understand, usless book, do not buy this book!
Review: I am taking a corse to learn java, and let me tell you this, this book is NOT helpfull at all. It's code is outdated, most of the time the code you write will not run, and it's "examples" often take the hard way to get something done. Most of my time with this book is spent trying to figure out a way to get their code to work, if you want my review, skip this book, get the web version of teach yourself java 1.1, it's free.
Rating: 
Summary: a little too unclear
Review: I bought this book having some background (but not much) in C. I was pretty familiar with programming in general, but I had never really programmed anything very complex. This book touted that it was meant to be readable by beginners who never have programmed before, but it seems like it would be rather hard to use this book as an introduction to programming, or to Java, for that matter. Let me explain...The book starts out great...but he loses his momentum quickly. I assumed that since the book was meant to be readable by someone with no programming experience there would be lots of hand holding, but the frustrating part is that he explains in detail the things that are rather trivial (like typing stuff in the command line on your OS, for example), while the complicated subjects are rather skimmed over, leaving you confused and frustrated. I found myself often having to look up extra info on the internet to demystify the explanations in the book. So if you do decide to buy this book, you might want to have Sun Microsystem's API reference handy ("http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4/docs/api/", as of 3/15/03). Another thing you'll probably need to bookmark if you read this book is the Java 2 Specification ("http://java.sun.com/docs/books/jls/second_edition/html/jTOC.doc.html" as of 3/15/03). This website pretty much outlines the whole theory of the language, and is the only reference I found that describes the syntax of the entire language. Beginners be wary though, these documents are written in "programmer jargon" and are sometimes so cryptic that it can be very frustrating for those with little or no programming experience. The reason I mention those websites is because the book is very very frustrating without them. There are lots of examples in the book that contain mystery code that hasn't been explained, and to make it worse, there are excercises at the end of the chapter that sometimes require you to use that mystery code, even though he hasn't explained it. I found this to be very aggravating. This is why I had to constantly refer to those two websites. Another thing that I felt was a drawback was that the book never goes over boolean operators. This is something you'd expect to find in every introductory Java book, but I couldn't even find it in the index of the book. In fact, he uses them in some examples in the book, but they aren't explained anywhere in the book!...unless I missed it :/, which is unlikely, since it's not in the index :p. You do learn how to write Windowed applications in this book, but from what I have seen, virtually any beginning Java book will cover this topic. I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone who has never programmed before. Too many topics are skimmed over or skipped. I'll give him a bit of credit though... it WAS supposed to be condensed into "24 hours". He just doesn't quite seem to grasp the right topics to emphasize in this condensed format though. That said, let me sum it up: 1) If you are a beginner with no programming experience, then this book should be avoided. 2) If you are a beginner with some programming experience and are interested in learning Java, then this book might work, but you'll need to refer to the 2 websites i mentioned above a lot...prepare to be frustrated ;) 3) If you are already fluent in one programming language and are just getting into Java programming, then this book might be ok as a quick overview of the Java language...but might be too basic for your needs... Lastly, I just want to say that the author mentioning EverQuest in his book did not help his image :p, as EQ is the worst MMORPG ever made! Just had to get that out of my system ;)... Sorry :(...
Rating:
Summary: Great for beginners.
Review: I bought this book to help with a Computer Science course that I was taking in college. I needed something quick and easy to read, and this one is both. The lessons are very basic, and I think this is a great book for any beginner who wants to know a little bit about the language. The chapters are well-organized, and you can find practially any topic you want in a matter of minutes. The bad thing about this book is that it only covers basic Java programming, so it didn't help very much when I had to write advanced programs in my class. I would recommend you find something a little more advanced than this if you need help with your programming labs.
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