Customer Reviews

Beginning Java

5 star:		(30)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Having attempted (and failed) to learn Java thru tutorials, software documentation, and several other books, I came across this book and I suddenly started to get somewhere.

This book starts at the beginning and requires that you build your knowledge from the fundamental concepts.

Learning Java is not easy. It is a very complex language and getting more complex with each new release. Adding to the difficulty is the Object Oriented nature of Java. You have to learn a new language and a new programming paradigm in order to be successful using Java. This book addresses both of these requirements and ties them together better than any other book or tutorial I have tried.

Some of the explanations for OO concepts and application in Java were the best I've ever seen and definately brought me to the "Aha" point.

Now I understand the concepts and am able to create useful programs of my own. Other texts left me with a lot of jargon, trivial examples, and no transferable skill. Great book - read this and do the work before you try anything else.

I'm 15 years old, and one day out of the blue I just decided that I wanted to learn how to program(computers, that is). Well, I dabbled a bit in other programming languages, or tried to. Often I couldn't find enough documentation to even get the compiler working. In the end I came upon Java. I downloaded a few online tutorials and the jdk and set at it. Unfortunately I found the tutorials to be a bit skimpy and hard to understand, often requiring the reader to have previous background in programming ( I didnt download these, of course). In the end I journeyed to my local library ( I wonder if I should be using a dicionary to check my spelling) where i checked out a couple books and found them to be worse than the tutorials. I finally got my hands of Mr. Horton's book, and to my great suprise, I found a book that described everything in detail and(!) I could understand it! ( I'm overdoing it aren't I?) once I understood the basic concepts I was more able to use all the other resources I had compiled with more ease. Not to say that I didn't finish the book, it took me 3 weeks and an enormous fine before I returned it having absorbed all I thought I could use. This is turning out a bit to long winded. Ah well, at any rate this book is truly a fine example of...a programming book...for Java... totally readable and understandable( which, to my knowledge are two different things...). My problem with his book (A.K.A: why I'm giving it 4 stars) is Horton's rambling on about principles that well,... I know I'm not going to use (and by the way a ,... is 4 pauses). One odd section was his rambling on about hexadecimal numbers, which yeilded no meaning to me no matter how manny times I read it.

My next problem ( and by far the worst) are a few problems in the source code, parenthisese( lord, I know I spelt that wrong, inexcusable considering how often I use them) where there should be brackets and the like. Such little errors will drive you insane- especially early on when you can't spot the problem because of inexperiance.

Ok... that's it, all in all its a great book, one that I would without hesitation recommend to anyone... even if they don't care about progamming at all... although I'm not sure why.

BTW: I'm not going over this for typos, misspellings, or missing words altogether, so I hope you could read it. At any rate, at least you didn't have to read it in my handwriting. Uhhh huh.

*Caveat emptor!* After buying this book, I discovered that amazon.com sells three different editions of it. I unwittingly bought the oldest version (published June 1997, covering JDK 1.1). The fundamentals haven't changed, but I recommend spending a few more dollars to buy the latest version (published April 2000) , titled Beginning Java 2 - JDK 1.3.

With that disclaimer out of the way, I can say that this book is perfect for me. I've worked in the IT industry for about 5 years, primarily as a project manager. At the moment I'm on sabbatical, going through a self-directed retraining process to become an internet programmer of some sort (specific technologies still TBD). I may or may not decide to specialize in Java, but one of my immediate goals is to gain a solid understanding of the Java language.

The author, Ivor Horton, is a programming veteran (the cover photo showing his grey hair is a clue) who takes obvious pride not only in the craft of programming, but in the craft of writing. The prose is smooth and pleasant to read, and the treatment of the subject is logical, well-organized, and detailed. Horton's fondness for teaching also shines through, and he teaches you not only about Java, but about programming in general.

I'm only on Chapter 3 as I write this, but what has impressed me most is how Horton illustrates progressively simpler(and preferable) ways to accomplish a given programming task in Java. To some, that may seem like a roundabout way of getting to the point. But for serious students it provides an in-depth understanding of the subject. Before I started the book I already had a superficial conceptual understanding of object-oriented programming, or OOP. That is, I could spout rote explanations of how "classes", "objects", "methods", "properties" relate to one another. But thanks to Horton's teaching approach, I'm beginning to truly understand why OOP is powerful and useful.

As another reviewer pointed out, Horton relies heavily on mathematical examples in his Java programs. But I've always liked math, so that didn't bother me. If I decide to become a Java expert, I'll probably acquire some additional Java books that provide more relevant examples for internet programming.

In summary, this isn't a "Get Java quick" type of book - which I mean as nothing but a compliment. Super novice programmers may want to supplement it with a more introductory treatment to get started. Likewise, highly advanced programmers may prefer an encyclopedic reference work instead, but they still could get a lot out of this book, as the visual layout allows you to easily identify and skip over generic explanations of programming concepts.

I give the book 5 stars, because it's very well-suited to my present needs.

First half of book is good and well paced, however, the second half seems to require a considerable leap in ability. Probably still the best book on Java I have seen. Hopefully problems sorted in the next edition.

This is one of the best books I have ever used for learning a language. Each idea/concept being explained was clearly identified, then a program example was used to illustrate the concept, and then the example was gone over again to show how it worked. Every piece of code (every word) was explained in full. I only had two issues with the way the book was written. The first was that some of the naming conventions used for classes that were developed as examples in Chapter 5 were poorly chosen as they were similar in name to the concepts being explained. The second problem was that some of the programs that were used as examples were more complex than necessary to illustrate the concept being explained (same Chapter).

Although I think Horton's book is excellent for somebody with a firm background in C++, he attempts to teach abstract content with more abstracts, yet only to pile more abstrats on later! For example, he uses math too often in his logic, when other content will do.

Other authors do a much better job at teaching the Java language by example, rather than boring the reader with meaningless math operations. (If you are hung up on math, why not use something that is "real world" since Java is a real world computer language.)

I just can't recommend this book.

This book is really the bibel of java programming. Eventhough I was not a newcomer to java and programming as well it amazed me how easy Mr. Horton manages to explain complex programming example through an easy understood language. I can say it is simply the buy I have ever when it comes to computerbooks. This book gets all my recommendations to newcomers and more exsperienced programmers who want to see that some terms of programming can really be done in an easier and more proper way than they've ever dreamed about.

The best regards from Daniel Mersebak.

I have previous programming experience in Visual Basic, Perl, and JavaScript. I found this book to be slow-starting and not hands-on enough. It had a good introduction to OOP, and I am sure it is chock full ofinformation, but it is not readable at all. More like an encyclopedia. I grew tired and stopped.

This is a good book. It gave me a solid understanding of Java fundamentals. Of course, I've been doing programming for several years and was already familiar with object oriented topics. If you've never programmed or have never been introduced to object oriented programming, this book will probably be confusing (there is only about one chapter on basic OO concepts and much of the rest of the book builds on this). However, if you are familiar with OO, I think you will find this book quite useful.

(Unfortunately most of what I just learned about Java has probably already been made obsolete by the release of Java 2 ;-)

This book suffers from a phenomena that seems to pervade the "instructional" programming books that flood the market. Specifically, there are many errors and omissions.

Catch 22: If you know the language, these errors and omissions would be obvious, but I assume you bought the book to learn the language, so...

New languages are difficult enough to learn, especially ones as complex as java, without having to figure out things the author left out or incorrectly stated. At least the code examples should be checked for accuracy and correctness!

The final blow is that the site where you are supposed to be able to download the code examples returned a 404 Not Found error message - what happened to www.wrox.com?

If you do struggle through all this, you will have a better understanding of java, but the cost is high!