Customer Reviews

Java 2: A Beginner's Guide

5 star:		(32)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

When I needed to learn the Java programming language very quickly for work, I read many reviews and narrowed down my search to handful of few books. I looked at copies of my final possible choices in a local bookstore and finally purchased Herbert Schildt's "Java 2: A Beginner's Guide, Second Edition" and have absolutely no regrets.

Herbert Schildt's book was written for people to learn the fundamentals of programming in Java as easily and as quickly as possible. (Of course, each reader can go at his/her own pace.) After I began reading the book, I started to become accustomed to Java's terminology and downloaded Sun's free Java compiler online. Within a few days, I was writing my own simple stand-alone Window's applications and applets. After that, I started exploring more complex concepts.

Herbert Schildt's writing style and book organization made it possible for me to start writing a complex, multithreaded, work-related application within 4 weeks. He begins the book with a history of the Java language; it's relations to C, C++ and C#; it's built-in security & portability; bytecode; and object-oriented programming. He then explores data types, operators, and program control statements before explaining the heart of a Java program: classes, objects and methods. From there, the reader is ready to be introduced to some of Java's more powerful aspects: inheritance, polymorphism, abstract classes, packages and interfaces.

Next, what elevates Java over many other languages is its built in exception handling. Being able to track and locate programming errors is often one of the most difficult aspects of programming, especially when the program is large and complex. Java allows programmers to test various blocks of a program using the statements "try" and "catch". Some methods require the use of the "try" and "catch" block because of their potential to generate an exception that is outside of the program's control (such as file streams).

The next very powerful aspect of Java that Herbert Schildt explores is multithreading. Seasoned real-time programmers will be very familiar with the concept of multitasking, but for many novice programmers, the concept of multitasking or multithreading (as it is called in Java) can be daunting and confusing. Herbert Schildt's explanations of how to use multithreading (and its potential problems) are thorough and relevant. Finally, Herbert Schildt explores the creation of applets.

As your knowledge of Java expands, you'll find it very worthwhile to purchase a more comprehensive Java reference book that contains a broad list of the various classes and methods available within the language. For this, I highly recommend Herbert Schildt's "Java 2: The Complete Reference, Fifth Edition", which is geared for J2SE 1.4.

Overall, I rate "Java 2: A Beginner's Guide, Second Edition" by Herbert Schildt with 5 out of 5 stars. Java is a great programming language, and Herbert Schildt's instructions make learning the language is painless as possible.

I've been reading a LOT of intro Java books, and most seem to suffer from the same errors. One common type of book builds the entire text aorund the construction of a complex transaction engine- which I don't happen to have any interest in writing. Others start with a few examples, and then give you 200 page sof details of the language with no examples whatsoever, promising that "we'll see how this works in following chapters". Another type repeatedly provides examples in which we are encourged to ignore the confusing bits and just accept on faith that it's important they look that way. And then there are all those books that assume you know C++ and just need a little transition information.

Happily this book suffers from none of these flaws. It covers a wide range of applications, it's full of detail on the latest graphical interface tools, there are plenty of small examples, and no command or definitions is introduced without a clear example.

This is an excellent book for someone with some programming experience, but no experience in object oriented methods. Storngly recommended.

Overall, this book is a good introduction to Java for those with little or no programming background. Concepts are explained "from the ground up" so that first-time programmers can understand them. However, for a book that teaches Java to beginners and covers nearly the entire Java language, multithreading, I/O, and graphics programming, 600 pages is not long enough to give thorough and accurate descriptions.

I found many oversimplifications and half-truths throughout the book:

"Static methods may call only static methods." Not true -- static methods may call non-static methods if called on an explicit reference.

"A call to a superclass constructor must be the first statement in every constructor." Not true -- you can call the current class's constructor with "this" instead of "super". This is an important technique called "constructor chaining."

"Wait and notify may be called only from synchronized methods." Not true -- they may be called from non-synchronized methods as long as they are called from a synchronized block and called on a reference to an object the thread holds a lock on.

The explanation about how Java "passes objects by reference" confuses many beginning Java programmers, and the trick of passing an Integer to simulate passing an int by reference doesn't work because Java passes references by value and the wrapper classes are immutable. The explanation about method overloading supporting polymorphism is confusing because which overloaded method to call is decided at compile-time, whereas polymorphism means that the method to call is decided at run-time.

There are numerous examples that demonstrate the mechanics of Java without showing how the constructs should be used in an actual Java program. The example of a finalizer neglects to call super.finalize() as all finalizers should. The example of a catch block sweeps the caught exception under a rug instead of recovering from it. The example of a static initializer simply prints a message to show that it was executed instead of doing something useful like loading a class or library.

Readers who learn Java from this book should be prepared to study a more thorough and accurate Java programming book after this one. For those who just want to program in Java as a hobby, this makes a decent introduction to the topic. Just be aware that not everything the book says is true or as simple as it appears.

Like all of his books, Herb Schlidt is a master in defining programming concepts in a very simple, yet very concise and easy to read style.

I think this book on Java 2 will be a classic. It is extremely well structured into 12 modules which take will probably take most people 2-4 hours, or about 12 continuous days of reading to finish. No CD to keep the price low and the ability to download code examples online, mean you need an interet connected computer to effectively use this book.

This book will probably bring Java2 to a whole new generation of beginning Java programmers. If you haven't learned the language and want a gentle introduction, you could do a lot worse!

(Just to let you know I do not personally know and am not affiliated with the author or the publisher of this book.)

I posted a review here before. After working through part of this book, I have these additional comments:

The book can be useful to both unexperienced and experienced programmers alike. For unexperienced programmers, it might be helpful to read an introductory book on programming before reading this book (as of this writing, both "Sams" and the "For Dummies" series have beginner programmer books that are good). Experienced programmers migrating to Java will also find this book a good way to study the fundamentals of Java.

To run the programs that you make from the book, you either have to have something called the Java2 SDK or an IDE. The SDK is a tool that allows you to run your programs on your computer and can be downloaded for free from the Sun Microsystem website. An IDE is a tool that also lets you run programs, but you have to buy it from a store. If you download the SDK, you might have to set something on your computer called the 'CLASSPATH'. I think the SDK documentation explains this.

This book will teach the fundamentals of Java. The Java language is a very big language - there are lots of other things you can also learn about Java. However, before you can walk, you have to crawl. This book will teach to how to crawl.

A final thing I did not mention in my previous post was that each chapter ends with a "Mastery Check" mini-test with different kinds of questions. What is cool is that they also have questions that ask you to write mini-programs, and the sample answers are in the back of the book.

Let me respectfully begin by saying that I am not a programmer, and this book is not targeted towards professional programmers. My background is in business and education, and I have to take a meaty course in Java as a part of a post-graduate program I am going to start in the fall. I am in the process of finishing chapter ten of this book, and it is a painless and thorough introduction to Java and OOP concepts.

I started my self-study on Java using Ivor Horton's Introductory Java book. Unquestionably, this is a fantastic starting point for professional programmers starting in Java, but I found the explanations and the examples in the book to be extremely confusing and disheartening. "Java 2 A Beginner's Guide," covers most of the content of the first half of Horton's book. However, the examples are clear and crisp, and Schildt is a master teacher because every chapter starts with purposefully simple concepts and problems and then more complex work is introduced. However, the author writes in such a manner, that I can thoroughly understand everything.

Please let me reiterate that I am NOT a programmer, but taking a course in structured programming at university has helped me learn Java. I have now re-read the first seven Chapters of Horton's book, and I totally understand what is gong on. This fact alone makes this book an excellent purchase. I must confess that learning Java is not an easy process for me. Schildt's book is not designed to turn people who have few computer skills into programming wizards. There is a lot to learn in Java, but this book really helps to get people, with just a touch of programming experience up to speed, so that they can tackle some of the harder books. I am totally bemused as to why this book is ignored by readers when so many lesser books get praised?

(Just to let you know, I do not personally know and am not affiliated with the author of this book or the publisher.)

I just bought this book, and I cannot agree more with the previous poster (a reader from Arizona). At first, I was skeptical, thinking that it it would be just another "teach yourself book". But, after a cursory view, as of this writing, this is probabaly THE best book for people with little or no programming experience to use to learn the basics of Java on their own.

This book looks like a masterpiece as far as teaching a beginner how to program in Java. The author Herbert Schildt seems to really have spent a lot of time figuring out how to present what could be difficult material to learn and simplify it for beginners. He seems to have limited the amount of difficult "computer jargon" in the book and instead explains everything using plain English. This isn't a book that you just read; it contains a lot of clearly explained step-by-step exercises and projects as the book goes along to allow the reader to practice what he/she is reading. The book is extremely well-organized and thought out.

I can't believe I'm writing this, but I think he has actually produced a book that will make it fun for a beginner to learn Java! The font type is of the friendly sort, and he smartly uses bold typeface to emphasize important terms. He also includes little dialogue boxes within the coding presentations to explain material. The book also contains quick drill questions (with answers at the bottom of the page) to reinforce blocks of material and "Ask the Expert" boxes where a reader can delve deeper into a topic. And he also explains everything efficiently and consicely. I even like the cover of this book; I think it has nice and non-intimidating colors.

The book isn't really a reference, rather it is a study tool. I suppose one could use it as a reference. (However, I bought his The Complete Java2 Reference 4th Edition, and I'll probably return it for now and buy it later if I do a lot of Java programming. As a study tool, this book seems better).

I might write another review after I finish working through this book.

Holy Grail found!!! If you are new to Java and want the best Java book to start with Herb Schildt's A Beginner's Guide is tops. I purchased other books that I thought were a good first book, but kept throwing them under the rug only after a few chapters because they were either choppy, frustrating, disorganized or unclear. My recommendation for learning java would be in this order:
1. Java 2: A Beginner's Guide
2. Java 2: The Complete Reference
3. Head First Java
4. Murach's Begining Java2 (innovative teaching layout)

Books that frustrated me as a beginner book and ones that couldn't continue reading were:
- Beginning Java Objects (intermediate book)
- Java2 SDK 1.x Edition (I don't like his math examples!!)
- Learning Java
- Java2 How to Program (poor order of topics)
- Java2 in 24hours (first 1/3 was good)
- Laura Lemay's Teach yourself Java2 in 21 days (manual reference type book, yuk)

Good Luck

PS: (whew, I'm glad my company allowed me to buy as many books as I wanted until I found one that I was comfortable with. Thanks Herb!)

I'm a Java instructor, and I love this book. It's excellent for cross-training folks from the mainframe to the Web. The book is divided into modules that can be taught in instructor-led classes in the same order. Depending on your students, you could cover all modules in 8 days. Each section has "one-minute" drills that students can orally respond to (although the answers are in small print on the same page). Also, each module has sample programs that literally give students an order to follow as in: "Step-by-Step: 1. Create a new file called ..." My only disappointment is that the author didn't cover Java topics that are intermediate to advanced in nature because he does such an effective job. His module on Java Threading is so clear and consise that students can easily follow the concepts.

I'm a networking guy by trade, and have never been very adept at programming, and I've never had any luck with teaching myself any sort of language from a "21 days" book. I'm taking a required course for my degree - "Intro to Programming with Java" and was still having difficulties in figuring out exactly WHY I was typing certain lines. Most books I've read just say "Let's jump right in!" (My college textbook actually says this...) Wait! Let's NOT!

Java 2: A Beginner's Guide is very aptly named. Having NO previous experience to draw from, this book does a very good job of explaining things is a very orderly fashion, with plently of examples and even projects to work through. Although I've only completed the first 200 pages, I can honestly say that it's "clicked" for the first time. The going is slow; I would recommend typing each example and think about what the code is actually doing, but I know that my retention rate will be very high. This book makes learning to program enjoyable, and that's quite an achievement coming from me - I greatly dislike writing code. I would whole-heartedly recommend this to anyone looking at code for the first time, as it will certainly make my classroom assignments and labs a breeze.

The only drawback to this writing is that I am a third into the book, and I don't appear to have covered a huge amount of material. There's good reason for this, however. The "Complete Guides" to Java are 1200 pages, and are quite hefty tomes. Since this book is branded as a reference for the beginner, I can't really mark it down for that reason. This book does represent a great way to get started on learning the Java language.

Jayson Tobias
CCNP CCDP MCSE