Customer Reviews

Exploring Java, 2nd Edition (O'Reilly Java)

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I went through many books before stumbling on this one. The book is well organized and clearly written. All of my programmer friends swear by this book. It does not overwhelm the reader, and introduces the topics in a very clear and organized manner. A MUST read for a beginning Java programmer, but I would not suggest it to an individual new to programming.

Exploring Java is the Java book I used the most out of all my Java books which includes the Sun Java Series. It is a very good technical book but definetly not for a beginner and by beginner I mean someone who doesn't know any type of programming language at all and doesn't know OOP concepts. But for a someone who has done a fair amount of programming and want to pick up Java. I must say that this book is a must have in your Java book collection.

Great book, clearly written, lives up to the O'Reilly name. This is no "Dummies" book. Includes some discussion of the state of java and security, etc. I read the first edition, and the only thing it's missing is a CD... For a top-notch and complete Java reference, check out The Java Application Interface, Vols 1 and 2, by Gosling, et al. (Addison Wesley)

The book is a decent tutorial. Quite a few people have commented it is no good for beginners. However there are different levels of beginner.

I have used scripting languages and keep my own web pages. I understand the basics of if ..then and Loop's. I was therefore pretty much a "Beginner". i enjoyed this book (it's a while since I first used it) because it was about the level I required to move "up" to more complete programming. I now use servlets and components and get a great deal of pleasure from programming and solving problems. I think this book was set at a high enough level to keep my interest through the learning process, several others were good but so plodding that I could not sustain the enthusiasm to keep going.

Im short, if you have used some scripting, maintain web sites and have a decent idea about computers then it will probably be challenging but rewarding. "Comlete and Utter" Beginners will find it assumes too much prior knowledge.

This is the one basic Java book that I recommend to all my friends. The writing style is exceptionally clear and to-the-point. For someone with some programming experience, the book is informative and doesn't waste time. I suspect that novices will also find the book helpful, with with about 4 concise chapters on the Java language and object-oriented programming.

It gives an excellent overview of the Java API, including the AWT, and it's the kind of book you'll use for *more* than a week or two.

I'm pleased with the number of examples in the book: sufficient, yet not so many that the real stuff (the useful information) is left out. The examples are well chosen, and often are general-purpose tools that you'll want to use yourself or base your own code on.

While the book doesn't claim to go into depth on the more involved topics, it does have nice introductions to some of them, such as JavaBeans.

My only complaint with this book is that it focuses only on Java 1.1 and doesn't warn you when a feature being discussed is not part of Java 1.0. (Obviously, this becomes less of an issue as time goes on.)

Although in need of an update for Java 2 (which I understand is in the works), I have found Exploring Java to be the single best treatment of Java programming for the experienced programmer. Even though I have a fairly extensive collection of Java books, I find myself using Exploring Java more than all the other texts combined.

This book is well-written and clearly organized.

It is not a comprehensive reference manual on Java (though such a manual at this point would be around 25,000 pages.)

It explains difficult concepts clearly, such as inner classes and the Java event model.

I hope it is updated to cover Java 1.2.

Honestly, I didn't read this book from A to Z yet, but I open it first whenever I need to recall something basic in Java ( How does == differ from equal() ? What is "shadowing variables" ? How should I work with all those I/O streams ?.. ) and it *always* helped me. I think, this book is an excellent reference for standard ( not advanced ) Java topics and once you have it - you always equipped with an expert to answer your newbie questions. And, believe me, this is *a lot* till we become Java experts. So, if studying Perl means "Learning Perl" by O'Reilly, then no doubt - studying Java means "Exploring Java" for me.

I have read tons of java books. Exploring Java, Thinking in Java and oh-so-good Core Java (just name a few) But whenever I start writing java code, this book is always beside my keyboard.

One problems with documenting any computer language or system today is that things evolve so quickly it's almost impossible to keep a book current without yearly revisions. Java is certainly a prime example; many of the books out (including this one) still concentrate on applets, and that's not the direction where Java is going. Applets have all but disappeared in favor of servlets, as many have realized the truth of the characterization of Java as the "write once, debug everywhere" language.

Another problem with many Java books is a lack of graded examples that introduce features of the language in a logical manner. Many start with a few small programs and a "don't worry about this feature, we'll explain it later" attitude, and then give you 200 pages of language details with no examples. Others develop one huge application and use that as the basis of the text. Fine, perhaps, if you're developing a similar application, but otherwise only confusing.

This text does suffer a bit from a paucity of examples. It's not a bad book, especially at the reduced price, and it's a decent introduction to Java. But there are better ones for not much more.

My current favorite in a purely introductory text is Herbert Schildt's "Java 2: A Beginner's guide". Plenty of examples to illustrate every feature as it's introduced, and a logical progression to the text that's based on learning the language, not a particular application.