Customer Reviews

Java: The Complete Reference, J2SE 5 Edition

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I thought this book would help me learn Java when I first bought it, but I think the examples are skimpy. A more complete reference and tutorial is Cay Horstman's and Gary Cornell's 7 ed. of Core Java 2: Volumes 1 and 2. These 2 volumes have great examples, and go more in-depth into Java. Skip Schildt's book, and buy the Core Java Volumes even if you need just a reference. You will be happier, and learn more.

This book as the name suggest gives you complete overview for learning and understanding Java. It clearly points out the differences between Java 1.4 and Java 1.5 (J2SE 5.0). It highlights the important points and gives introduction to Swings, Servlets and a good financial application using java.

Good for any beginner !!

The book arrived promptly and in good condition.
The subject matter of the book is well covered.
I like the inclusion of informative background information.

This book is a good, by example book for you to learn Java and understand how and why it includes certain features/functions in the language. If you are looking for a reference book, this one is a bit hard to navigate to find detailed information about class interfaces. Another thing it is lacking is in-depth design patterns. If you are looking for detailed information on writing Swing interfaces, look elsewhere as well.

However, all in all, this book will successfully guide you through the Java language. You should be able to write multi-threaded programs that are networked and can successfully use file IO by the end of the book. It is especially useful if you have written software in other languages. If you are a beginner at writing software, you should probably buy a beginner's book before this.

Very good book if you are a beginner. It gives you the basics for everything you need. I havent given it 5 stars because it lacks some of the advanced stuff, you end up referring to some other books for that.
Certainly recommended if you are planning to use this as a reference too.

This book is a decent reference and a semi-fair tutorial, even though it only claims to be a reference. What it is not is complete, the basics of the language and a small amount of the available classes in v1.5.x is listed. A complete reference would take at least 2 volumes, but would be just that, complete.

IMO, a huge problem is in the Collections section. Simply learning the basics of more advanced Data Structures does not come close to making a complete programmer. A programmer has to know exactly how a hashtable or an AVL-tree works, not just learn how to sort-of use the versions in the API. If you can't write your own version of the class you are going to use, you shouldn't be using it, until you learn how that class really operates. This doesn't really apply to simpler Classes, but especially applies to more advanced topics like Data Structures and Networking. Java abstacts them to a point where you do not really have to learn them. Abstracting is a good thing, and so is the simplicity of the SE API, but it makes it hard for people learing on their own how to be real programmers. Any monkey can use an API, it takes a bit more to take the next step and learn how they work and how to write them. In the long run, that will make you a more efficient and professional programmer.

The basic classes are covered, but not even all the methods in those classes are covered. There are too many classes missing from this book to be able to call it a complete reference. If you think it is complete, you don't know the language well enough. I really like how he points out similarities to C++ and most importantly differences. Too many people treat Java like a subset of C++ and end up writing poor Java code. It is a completely different languages and pointing out the differences, especially on new features that, on the surface, look like C++(enumerations and generics).

It is written fairly well, and the explainations are always at least good. Mr. Schildt has finally learned how to write and is a decent author. Not bad considering he was considered a complete joke 5 years ago.

I would probably give it four stars, except for two reasons.

1) Like I said before, it is not complete.

2) I also have a serious issue with the self-appointed "leading authority on C,C++, Java and C#". What a stupid and outlandish claim. Dennis Ritchie, Bjarne Stroustrup, James Gosling, Andrew Keonig could all be called leading authorities, but only in a single language. Not coincendently, they are all far better authors then Mr. Schildt is. No one, and I mean no one, could be a master of all four, to the extent of being able to claim 'leading authority' status in each one. Arrogance.

As a C/C++ programmer switching to Java I found this book very helpful as a beginning book. It was pointed out that the author takes the time to go over why certain things are different between the two languages... It should be noted that if they were not pointed out would have landed me in quite a baffeling bit of trouble, as I am sure is the case with many others.
It is agreed that the title is a bit much, but it is at the fault of Osborne not the author, it is the name of the series of books, and none of them are complete, but for that matter there is not a computer science book ever printed that completely covers a single subject... and I dare say there never will be either. With that said, a better title would be The Complete Beginners Reference, and for that purpose it is an excellent book, and that is why it got five stars... that was after all the books very obvious intention.
Someone mentioned that using an API without knowing how it was built and absolutely works is bad practice... I have two comments on that actually, the first being is that if you bring that up at a meeting at work some day you will get alot of rolling eyes if you are lucky, but more than likely a good chewing out, or firing from the boss... you dont have time to understand ever facet of every single function, most of the time you are using bits and pieces of a program that multiple other people wrote and throwing it all into a program inside of a few months that would have taken you years to have wrote alone. Second, you have to learn to walk before you can run, and APIs are excellent ways to get into some more advanced stuff with out completely knowing what you are doing yet... humans do learn by trial and error after all, think about the first time one of your parents told you not to touch something hot.
Lastly a leading authority does not mean he is the master of those languages... the people you mentioned are known as the best programmers of that language, there is alot more to programming than being extrememly good at manipulating the language... for instance you may have an extremely well founded knowledge of how the compiler handels your code... as does schilt... you may not be able to come up with the code, but you can look at it and tell exactly what it is going to do, we have several people at work that do that, they are horrable programmers, but they are extremely good at finding logic errors. Beginners need a good elementary base with this, and that is why they get someone who is good at it to write the book.

So Kudos to Herbert Schildt on an excellent beginners book... and reference to those of us having a bad day.

If you're a beginner, this book can help you... However, if you intend to learn data structures and algorithms such as sorting and searching, then you'll be out of luck with this book. You'll definitely need another reference bcos you'll only learn about the java util methods which would most likely not be accepted if you're learning java formally. You can get some useful information from this book though. It's very good with the basics.

This book is well-written, and very good for beginner level and intermediate level in Java. And it has boosted my learning phase in Java !

If you have a some background in Java then this book is a must. It has all the commands and functions listed out and what they do. I wouldn't recommend this book for beginners.