Teach Yourself Java 1.1 in 21 Days

Rating:
Summary: Best Java book of 5 started so far
Review: I felt Laura Lemay did a great job for the first 13 chapters, she has a way with words. The remaining chapters were understandable, but some of the concepts were relatively muddled. Perhaps multiple authors (including Laura) on most of those were the cause. (And perhaps it was simply that I read the book without coding any of it. What I'm saying is: It's so well written, this PowerBuilder developer learned Java without sitting in front of a tube).

The final chapter, "Under the Hood", lived up to its title and tied it all together well. I picked up and layed down several other Java books due to frustration over bad grammar, redundancy, editing mistakes or ludicrous example code. This doesn't suffer from those problems. Very good read, overall. Can't wait to dig into "Teach Yourself Java 2 Platform in 21 Days".

Rating:
Summary: Fair...but not Great
Review: I would like to meet Laura Lemay (the main author) to ask her three questions:

1) Why are there so MANY typos and errors?

2) Why did you name the book 'Learn Java 1.1 in 21 Days' when much of the book covers Java 1.02?

3) Why are there so MANY typos and errors? (or did I already say that? hint hint)

The reality is, the book is not bad, but it really suffers from bad editing, a preoccupation with Applets over Applications, and wastes FAR too much time covering the JDK 1.02 (considering the title says it is covering JDK 1.1). The first week or so was well written (again, not counting the typos and sloppy editing), but some chapters were far too long to reasonably cover in one day.

My recommendation is that you look at the Core Java Series books (vols I & II) and at Just Java and Beyond (all three are VERY well written and are much more robust than 'Learn Java 1.1 in 21 Days').

Rating:
Summary: Java in 21 Days 1.1
Review: I would say The Beginning is very good for people having no concept of OOPS and want to start with Java programming specially Laura Lemay, I would say is one of the best autor and having given good practical examples. However as soon as Charles L. Perkins takes over we are loosing our tracks totally. It cannot be useful because even a simple thing has made so complicated that it will cause you to think as if it is very difficult and there are no examples which you can try and understand. I am not sure want author is trying to achieve. I would suggest to new learners please don't even think of reading Charles L. Perkins portion, it will misguide you and you may loose your further interest in Learning Java

Rating:
Summary: short but concise descriptions, good for a beginner
Review: The title really fools you to believe that you can learn Java in 21 days. But the fact is you won't learn Java in 21 YEARS, using this book. If you already know Java, may be this book is good for a reference....brushing up on what you know. But, if you don't know the language at all and you thought you wanted to learn it in 21 days (at least that's what the Title fools you into believing), then you will definitely be sorry. It is like someone asking you to put a puzzle together, without giving you a picture of what you need to put together. The sample codes, most of them, are very ambiguous. Actually I was going to give it zero stars...unfortunately there was no option for it.