Reviews for Learning Java

1. Great for learning

   Rated 4 out of 5 stars, February 12th, 2010

   This is a great book, would like it if it was a hard back since its so easy to get the pages bent

2. Great book

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, December 12th, 2009

   This book is simple to understand, with good examples. For a user that already knows how to program and just want to get used with Java, I can say that the book is great.
   
   Thanks to the authors.
   
   It's drawback: It's weight...

3. You will learn if you already know a bit...

   Rated 4 out of 5 stars, April 12rd, 2009

   If you already know some about programming then you will find this book excellent. Otherwise you may struggle. There is very little explanation about control structures (if's, for loops, do while etc.) as the book says "they are very similar to other langauges". For a beginner this could prove to be a major stumbling block, however if you are familiar with these then good explanations are given about things that are different in java (arrays for example). There are also 3 chapters devoted to object oriented programming which are excellent if like me you are really tackling that subject for the first time.
   
   My only issue with this book is there are very few to no places where you are set tasks to try and code yourself. If you're a learn by doing type then you might find something else is better suited to your needs, although I've yet to come across one with as good explanations as this book.

4. great book to get a firm handle on concepts and new features.

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, June 12th, 2007

   I've had this book (and still reading in it), but also had java in a nutshell with it, and I already knew older java versions. Both make a great combination. You can read the nutshell to get the basics fast, and then refer to this book when you want to go a little more in depth.
   
   With this said, any new comer to java should know that there is no one book that has it all. For this book, it's good as a reference to the language and its concepts mainly, not the API.

5. Starts badly, gets brilliant

   Rated 4 out of 5 stars, April 12th, 2007

   I hated reading this book at first. It starts with some examples to "show the power of Java" that made my eyes glaze over. The author(s) then spend far too much time talking about different ways to assign primitives and give a very crude introduction to Objects.
   
   Then about a third of the way through, it gets a lot clearer and a lot better. The chapters on generics and threading are so good, I find myself referring to them even now. To be honest, I think that perhaps one of the authors is fantastic and the other is simply average... the quality of the chapters fluctuates wildly.
   
   It is true that the authors try to cover everything, but I don't think you're supposed to remember everything that is said... it's more of a tour of the language and its standard libraries. I believe a tour of the IO, networking and GUI libraries is essential to anyone learning the language and am glad they were all covered. The evolving example of a simple web server is an inspired way to showcase most of the libraries.
   
   The book only touches the surface of some basic principles (e.g. mutability, equality, generics, threads, exceptions, serializability, cloneability) but these are things that most experienced programmers do not fully understand and it gives a foundation to learn more... I'd seriously recommend Josh Bloch's "Effective Java" to follow this book once you feel comfortable writing in Java.
   
   I would not recommend this book to a newbie programmer... it is aimed at those with experience in other languages but haven't touched Java. For example, if you don't know what an Exception is, you'd probably be best starting a little lower... probably with a SAMs book.