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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Serious flaws hamper otherwise good book ...., November 16, 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: Java 1.2 in Record Time with CDROM (Mass Market Paperback)
Holzner does a good job of helping beginning java programmers learn to code some little applets. HOWEVER, the Java 1.2 examples in the book do not work! If the author (and/or editors) would have taken the time to test them with the JDK 1.2 , they would have discovered this. Obviously they did not. These examples were written for a previous version of Java and simply not updated. Another example of slapping a Java 2 title onto an old Java 1.1 book. This present a critical obstacle to the newbie who will not know how to alter the programs to get them running. This flaw is serious enough for me to disuade anyone from purchasing this book unless they have a Java expert handy to guide them through the correction process. Very sloppy job of editing, guys!
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent Book for both beginner and experienced programmer, January 18, 2000
This review is from: Java 1.2 in Record Time with CDROM (Mass Market Paperback)
I recently passed SUN certified Java Programmer exam. This book is the best Java book I have seen so far. For a beginner, this book teach you Java in a fun and clean environment. You learn by doing and seeing, not just dry reading. You will have a real feeling on what Java can do for you. And in short time, you have learned the most important part of Java a beginner should know. For an experienced programmer, you will get good understanding of Java's capabilities and the differences between Java and whatever you already know by quickly going through those examples. Many years ago one of my high school teacher once told me that only when you TRUELY UNDERSTAND something, then you can explain it in a few sentences in plain words. I think this applies to the authors of this book. They fulfiled their "record time" promise. This book really helped me a lot.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Good, but not great, Java quickstart, September 12, 2000
This review is from: Java 1.2 in Record Time with CDROM (Mass Market Paperback)
I've reviewed quite a number of Java titles written for the beginner. Some are fairly ordinary, others are exceptional. Unfortunately, Java 1.2 In Record Time falls into the former category. That is not to say it is not a good guide to learning Java quickly, but it does have its flaws. Firstly, the book was written for an early beta of JDK1.2 (now named Java 2 v1.2). Any of the code written for the Swing platform will not run -- it uses the old com.sun.java.swing.* packages, rather than javax.swing). This means you must manually change all the import statements, and recompile. This is an annoyance, particularly for those who are unaware of the changes from early betas. If you visit the website, you can find out how to fix this by reading their errata. Secondly, fourteen out of fifteen "skills" taught in the book concern graphics and GUI programming (that's 87.5% of chapters). While GUI programming is certainly a useful skill, the book stops just after briefly touching threads and JAR files -- there is no networking, no coverage of data structures, files, I/O streams, etc. Putting these two flaws aside for the moment, Java 1.2 in Record Time is a good way to get your feet wet. You'll learn the Abstract Windowing Toolkit (AWT), and Swing libraries. As an introduction to the language, Java 1.2 in Record Time does a fine job, but readers will have to purchase other titles to cover all the skills a beginner needs. <i> -- David Reilly, for the Java Coffee Break</i>
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