Customer Reviews

Beginning Java SE 6 Platform: From Novice to Professional (Expert's Voice)

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This is not a book for people, with no prior experience, to learn Java.

I recently purchased this book under the impression that it was a book for those that are wishing to learn Java. Though, upon looking into the book, I realized that was not what I had purchased. Here is a quote from the book's introduction:

"Welcome to Beginning Java SE 6 Platform. Contrary to its title, this is not another beginner-oriented book on Java. You will not learn about classes, threads, file I/O, and other fundamental topics. If learning Java from scratch is your objective, you will need to find another book."

This books - provides a jump start on the latest and greatest that has been added to Java 6. This book is not for beginners. Even experience people would learn a lot about what Java 6 is all about - what are the different enhancements made, what important bug fixes have been made to Java 6. The best thing is the author provides a lot of URLs of places to browse for more indepth details for the more curious minded people.

This book offers little in substance other than writing a paragraph or two more than Sun does in its change log. If you aren't familiar with Java 5, you will need to find another book because it assumes that you know Java (very well) already. The title "Beginning Java SE 6: Novice to Professional" is at best confusing, and at worst deceptive.

Furthermore, the coding examples and figures are, for a lack of a better word, lazy. There are NO inline comments whatsoever. The figures don't depict what the previous code example was created to demonstrate. For instance, why have a picture of an application without any Tabs if you are trying to show how you can have a close button inside of a tab now (see Gui Toolkits: Swing chapter)?

If you are a novice, get another, more comprehensive book.
If you are a professional, just go to the Sun website and look at the Java 6 API.
If you need a paperweight, get this book.