Customer Reviews

Java in 60 Minutes A Day

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Aug 2007 (see end for most recent updates)

I'm fairly pleased with what I've read so far in this book. I'm in the process of devouring it off my NetLibrary account and in the past five or so hours, I've sailed through the first five chapters. I can't comment on "significant" errors the previous reviewer posted, though I can say that some of the problems are really obvious. For example, in many cases where quotes (") were required, my copy shows double tick marks ('') instead. I'm not sure if this is a problem with NetLibrary or the text itself.

The examples given are all shown from a Windows command prompt (so far) and the author assumes the reader can use Notepad to enter code. I would prefer that the author takes time to move readers toward Eclipse IDE since it's free and can really help reduce the tedium of entering / debugging and running Java code, thus making it easier to learn and more fun to interact with. Granted - it takes a bit of effort to get Eclipse installed, but so did installing Java for the first time.

I've been writing software for the past twenty-five years and am just now starting to pick up Java (wish I had picked it up ten years ago now). The authors methods make me think beyond the printed text and do a good job of helping readers adapt from a procedural style of programming (identifying the steps to solving a problem) to a more object-oriented style (identifying unique classes of "stuff" and writing ways to make those classes interact).

As I said above, I haven't finished the book yet, and while I probably wouldn't have paid $50 for what I've gotten so far, it is clearly worth checking out. It got me interested enough to file a positive review here and I am acutally considering buying the book.

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May 2008

I purchased this book a few months ago and found that my experience with the first five chapters has continued nicely up through chapter 12. While I haven't had as much time to devote to this book until very recently, I am pleased to report that I'm still finding that the quality level is about 4 / 5. When I peeked at chapter 18 - JDBC, it appears that one must have MS Access in order to use the examples. That frustrates me since I'm a Unix-based user and don't have MS Access. All-in-all, however, I'm glad I bought the book, though I have to admit, I was able to snag it used from Amazon for about $2 plus shipping. It's clearly worth that, but I'm still leaning more toward "Learning Java" (O'Reilly) for the more advanced concepts. I may just switch back over to "Learning Java" now that I've got the core concepts down (chapters 1-11).

By the way - the problem with quoting appears to be a NetLibrary issue, not one with the book.

I've read this book twice, it has a great simple explanation on the Core Java and little more. I suggest it to whom they have a basic to intermediate level in Java, This is the one ! The best point to begin Java with. Also a great future is the online ready to download source files, It realy helps you when your confused to complete the Lab exercises.

At last I think if there was a CD-ROM included with the book involving the SDK and some bouns it was much more better.

I bought this book, expecting to get a working knowledge of the JAVA programming language. Already being proficient in C++ and Visual Basic, I wanted to add another programming language to my skill set. For the most part this book did help accomplish my goal, but in the later chapters too many mistakes and laziness by the author ruined my overall view of this book.

The first few chapters in this book are very straighfoward and easy to follow, the author did a very good job in explaining JAVA concepts as well as providing examples putting those concepts to work. Each Chapter also has Labs at the end of the chapter in which you must use the concepts explained throughout the current chapter to complete. Because the chapters were written so well I was able to complete all the labs without even looking at the solutions.

However in the later chapters, I begin to discover that the author got very lazy. This is apparant when during quite a few chapters instead of listing the entire exmple programs in the book, he refers you to the website. Meaning if you are not by a computer or don't have internet access at all, then you will miss out on critical things that he does in the program. Additionaly, even if you are by a computer, just the fact that you have to stop reading just to download examples that should be listed in this book is very distracting. This makes the chapters very hard to follow and frustrating to say the least.

Also while errors were relatively few, there were some critical errors in the book, that if you don't pay close attention you will be VERY confused.

While I expect even the best books of this nature to have errors in the text, I find it unacceptable that the example programs and lab solutions available on the website have errors in them. I have found that even the authors example programs and lab solutions don't work because of errors. There is really no excuse for this at all. I mean were these programs even tested before they were put on the website? Apparantly not. One lab solution is just an exact copy of a lab for a previous chapter and does NOTHING that the Lab is asking for. I was able to figure out how to do it nonetheless, but it would have been nice to see how the author solved the problem. The current chapter I am in right now, I am completely stuck on Lab 17.4 and even the author's "solution" does not work so there is nothing I can do. I sent an email to the author requesting help, but I don't expect a response anytime this century.

I will just continue on so I can at least finish the book, but it seems that I will need to get another JAVA book to get a full understanding of the concepts that this book failed to explain properly due to mistakes.

I can't recommend this book for beginners, even if you have prior programming language experience you will find the later chapters very frustrating because of the problems I have mentioned above.

For $50 I would expect at least the author's solutions and examples to be correct, but they are not. In my opinion this is not $50 well spent.

i have this book in pdf format and i really enjoy it so i decided to buy it in physical, and this one is like new i recommand it for, java new lerners.

As another reviewer writes, this book's coding has bugs. It seems symptomatic of a computer programming language as important as Java supposedly being meted out in "60 minutes-a-day."

Here's a representative example of such a bug. On page 518:

Runnable bye = new DisplayMessage("Goodbye"):
Thread thread2 = new Thread(hello);

Notice that instead of the new Thread object being passed the bye reference, it is passed the hello reference. On page 519, the text even states "at no point did thread2 get a chance to run and print out Goodbye." If you change the second line above to

Thread thread2 = new Thread(bye);

and run the code (as I did), then thread2 does indeed get a chance to run and print out Goodbye.


That said, I really do enjoy the way the book's author Rich Raposa forms his thoughts. The responsibility for the failures (that is, the coding bugs) falls on the shoulders of the editors from Wiley.

The lesson learned here is that some computer programming books, such as those from O'Reilly (for example, Head First Java, 2nd Edition ) have editors that actually understand computer programming ensuring that few errors appear, while other editors such as those from Wiley employ editors with little to no knowledge of computer programming, merely ones who get excited about marketing gimmicks (such as, learning in "60 minutes-a-day").

Also check out:

Objects First With Java: A Practical Introduction Using BlueJ (4th Edition) (BlueJ is either a standalone IDE or a Netbeans IDE plug-in.)

and Stanford's free computer courses (which use Java).

If you're learning Java, then one might as well kill two birds with one stone, so to speak. Microsoft C# is really a Java clone, the differences are minor (C# and Java concepts actually have one-to-one mappings). So also be sure to check out: Head First C#, 2E: A Learner's Guide to Real-World Programming with Visual C# and .NET (Head First Guides).

I bought gr8 many no. of books on java (almost 20). All those books disturbed me a lot becoz none of them is clearly explaining concepts in a simple way. Then I saw this book in a shop and then i thought it is god sent book for dumb-headed fellows like me. Now, I read this book fully and mastered it. All chapters are excellent. But my favorite chapters are -- input and output(ch-16); database programming(ch-18). These are so well written that it strikes deep into ur head. I shud mention here that the tough chapters were :: Getting started with Java(ch-1) and Understanding inheritance(Ch-6).

I suggest all remaining authors to keep in mind that --
"write in simple way and don't expect the reader to have any knowledge"....becoz i bet all readers have dumb head like me.

Finally the book is superu !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.

Love,
A.K.Nag (Abdul Karim Nag)