68 of 70 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Beginning Java 2 (JDK 1.3 Edition) is a masterpiece!, September 4, 2000
This review is from: Beginning Java 2 JDK 1.3 Edition (Programmer to Programmer) (Paperback)
Would that I had encountered Ivor Horton when I first sought to learn any programming! Beginning Java 2 (JDK 1.3 Edition) is a masterpiece. I have been able to stay on track working through one chapter per day doing the reading and the exercises. This has been a challenging effort but the reward has been substantial growth on a daily basis of my understanding and facility with Java.
Because of its size (over 1200 pages), this is not the place for an absolute beginner to start. I would recommend Java for Students for those who are seeking an introduction to programming and Java at the same time. This is an excellent book if you have some orientation to programming, Java or not, and you want to develop a solid base in the language. The author notes in the Introduction that the word Beginner in the title reflects how much he assumes of the reader in his teaching style rather than anything about the skill level he is trying to develop in the reader. The book is thorough and does a good job of covering Java language, syntax, and the class libraries.
I have been very pleased with how clear the explanations are and how useful the examples and exercises are for learning Java. Rather than just code fragments, the author tends to use code samples to illustrate the points that he makes. He encourages typing the samples in yourself and playing with the parameters to get a feel for what is going on. This results in having more confidence with the language while developing your understanding. In the course of a chapter I find myself keying in 6 to 8 code samples.
I wonder if Ivor Horton began life as a mathematics professor. Many of the exercises involved calculating factorials, prime numbers, the volume of the Sun in cubic miles, etc. I have trouble working with these numbers on their own, let alone developing a computer program to calculate them. Thankfully, it is possible to follow the logic even with this unfamiliar material.
Wrox Press offers a website that documents errata that has been found in the book. Rather than just site a line here and there, the errata section often provides a whole block of code with the corrections made. This makes it easier to find the changes. I have not found them to be troubling but I copied them into a Word document and printed that out so I can correct each chapter before I read it.
Most amazingly, there is a Beginning Java email list associated with the book that is actively monitored by the author and a Wrox Press sysop. Readers report problems they are having with code or things they don't understand and other readers or the monitors provide ideas, suggestions, and answers. I have started a Lotus database to file things I am mining from the list so I can make use of them in the future. The list appears to be a place where both beginners and more advanced students can learn a lot.
Each chapter tends to build on the chapter before it. It works best to work through this book from start to finish. If you already know Java you might browse chapters to get a better grounding in a particular area but the author assumes you know what he covered earlier in the book and the chapters do not stand-alone.
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
High Expectations, October 2, 2000
This review is from: Beginning Java 2 JDK 1.3 Edition (Programmer to Programmer) (Paperback)
I bought this book because it got rave reviews right here on this site. I wasn't disappointed. It's excellent! Some techies can write books and some can't. This guy can. The explanations don't leave you in the dust, nor do they go to slow. It's jam packed with info, but your hand is always being held.
I don't like all the math used in the examples--it clouds the issues, but everything else was great.
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21 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good for "beginners", September 8, 2000
This review is from: Beginning Java 2 JDK 1.3 Edition (Programmer to Programmer) (Paperback)
I picked up this book to give myself another "once over" on the Java language from someone else's perspective, and to help me review before I start to crank down on studying for the certification exam. Ultimately, this book proved to give pretty thorough coverage of the language and it showed me things I missed before in other books. I think this book proves to be a very worthwhile read, but primarily for a certain group of people.
The target audience for this book fairly specific, as it is clearly intended for people who have never before programmed in a compiled language. If you are migrating from C/C++ or VB, I would speculate that the slow pace and wordiness will bore you. Mr. Horton's well explained examples, however, are a useful reference for many skill levels.
One observation that strikes me most about the book is the level of detail the author goes into. This tends to be a double-edged sword. If you need to get into the details, with a thoroughly explained example to boot, it is wonderful. But if you are reading on a subject to which you are already familiar, or not interested, it becomes painful. As an example, this is the one of the few beginning Java books that clearly explains all you need to know about bit twiddling (sure, most of us will hardly ever use it, but it is on the certification exam), but then it spends 16 pages discussing the intricacies of the Vector Class.
I really feel that the examples are the high point of the book. They are, for the most part, non-trivial and seldom overly contrived. The explanations for each example are very thorough and there is little chance of you getting left behind. Again, I found this to be a bit of a double-edged sword. While overall they are excellent examples, I felt that the examples are really the driving the direction of the book. This is often evidenced by structure of the book. For example, the BigDecimal and BigInteger Classes are not introduced until the last chapter in the book. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, as it rather forces you to read the entire text, and the index does a good job of telling you where to look. Ultimately, I believe true beginners will love the thorough explanation of the examples.
The toughest aspect of any entry level Java book is the introduction and paradigm shift into Object Oriented Design. This topic is difficult for me to judge, since I am already familiar with the concept. However, I can say that it avoids recursive definitions that plaques some other introductory Java books. You will especially love this book if GUI design is what you are after. The author builds a fairly complex application over the course of many chapters. The author also did a great job on multithreading, although it was very brief compared to the time allotted for some other subjects. I also enjoyed the final two chapters on JDBC, which should help the reader build a strong foundation on an extremely useful aspect of the language.
There are a few noticeable things that bothered me. For instance, missing from the book is any mention of the background and evolution of Java, which I have come to expect in any introductory text. One thing I feel I have to mention is the misnomer of the title. Nowhere in this book does the author discuss the differences of ANY of the versions of Java. The only substantial difference between this edition and the previous version is the inclusion of one chapter entitled "Adding Sound to your Programs." All in all, this doesn't really detract from the book, but I did feel a bit misled. Aside from that, the author sometimes misses some important semantics found in the Java Language Specification that a beginner would not pick up on. These include the separation of constructors from methods (technically speaking, a constructor is not a method), and the categorization of checked and unchecked exceptions. It also surprised me that the author never compares Java to any other compiled language.
Nit-picking aside, I think this book has a lot of great information packed into it. You'll get a lot for your money on this one. The index makes up for the unpredictable organization, so this book will serve well as a reference for those times when I need the details AND a practical example of implementation. If you are starting from scratch and need to be walked through lock-step (this book's target audience), then I recommend this book. If you are coming from any other language or are too impatient to work through all the details your first time around, then this book might frustrate you too much.
Considering the author's target audience, I have to give this book 4 stars.
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