Reviews for Java: A Beginner's Guide, 4th Ed.

1. Excellent text for learning java - but see caveat below

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, February 12th, 2010

   Herb Schildt offers a very clear and readable yet also commendably thorough step by step approach to learning to program in Java. Of all the beginners Java texts I've read or leafed through this seems to me to be the most complete and well structured, and it really does a fantastic job of breaking the often mystifying world of object oriented programming down into managable chunks.
   
   That said, I do not think this text is unreservedly suitable for absolute beginners wishing to learn how to programme in complete isolation (that is, sitting at home with nothing but this book and their PCs). The book assumes that you're familiar with some basic programming terminology (eg "compiler") and also assumes that you're quite comfortable using a command line interface to compile and run programmes (which I wouldn't ever recommend really, if you're learning Java download an integrated interface like eclipse - just google "java eclipse").
   
   If you already know a bit about programming or are converting from another language that's no problem, and if you read this book alongside taking a more formal course you don't need to worry about that either, but if you're absolutely new to the game and just want to spend your evenings learning a bit of programming I would really recommend reading something like "Beginning Programming with Java for Dummies" first because that really will hold your hand and walk you through all the basics of actually setting up your computer so that you can start programming (which, as mentioned, is somewhat glossed over here). That said, once you have graduated from programming pre-school so to speak, this text is absolutely invaluable.