Customer Reviews

Java 2 and JavaScript for C and C++ (Programmers, Revised Edition)

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

 

 

I wanted a book that for an experienced C++ programmer that would not waste time teaching me what a class is, etc. It did that, but unfortunately covers waaaay to much ground to be really practical to learn how to actually write code without additional reference material.

There are long coding examples presented with little explanation, which the reader is expected to spend hours deciphering and then say "voila, that's how it works."

Major concepts lacking. For e.g, nowhere could I find an explanation of when you have to use "throws" in a declaration.

The index is a joke. Try to look up Vector, implements, throws, Set...not there!

Although slightly thought provoking in its tactics, the main theses were misconstrued. There were many instances of erroneous teaching methods which led to unfavorable results. This book does have its bright sides, mainly pertaining to general layout of the book. The relation of Javascript to C++ makes the book very difficult to comprehend. Overall, as a Javascript programmer, I would not recommend this book to anyone.

Read what I wrote about the previous, 1.2 edition here on Amazon. The book has not been changed much - it just has a new cover.

What is missing from my review (the 1000-word limit has cut out the last 3000 words) is that the book is definitely NOT suited for a beginner. Just an example> check out the I/O and the AWT chapters. No beginner will understand them - even books like Lemay's Teach Yourself Java 2 in 21 Days are much more comprehensible.

You can buy this book if you already know the language and are eager to discover the differences between C++ and Java (too bad only the first 4 chapters emphasize them, the other chapters spend NO words on C++ at all), you can give it a try. Or just get the previous (and, therefore, cheaper) edition, as it's alsmost the same as this one...

It is a book designed to take C and C++ programmers and turn them into Java programmers. Therefore, the book skips over a lot of the basic syntax that other learning Java books go through.

Now, when you look at the book, you wonder why it is still so thick when so much material was skipped. The reason is that this book goes much deeper into Java than any other learning Java book I have seen. The book covers advanced topics like JavaBeans, RMI, Security, JDBC, references, package versioning, drap and drop, servlets, internationalization, COM, Media, and CORBA. Interestingly enough, some of the topics, like references, I have not yet seen covered in any other Java book at all.

JavaScript is just covered in a couple of chapters at the end of the book. This section seems tacked on to me. However, one of the two chapters does cover integrating Java and JavaScript together, which could be useful for people working on web-based Java projects.

If you are learning Java, already know C or C++, and want to only buy one book for learning purposes, this book might be the one for you since it will get you through the basics as well as much advanced material. Even experienced Java programmers may want to consider this book as it covers many new Java 2 topics that I haven't seen covered in another other book.

The index is throughly useless, but otherwise the book is great. I gave it five stars because, for once, the examples really helped. He gives you a practical example of just about everything you could expect from a book of this size. Its easy to read - plus, its organized so you can skip sections you're not interested in and then later go back. I'd really like to see more books like this out there.

As a very experienced programmer I was hoping this book could leverage my knowledge of C++ to quickly teach me what is new or different in Java. Instead this huge book takes a very long time to teach the simplest concepts. It did explain most Java concepts in terms of their C and C++ counterparts, but it also took the time to explain how things work in C/C++ in way too much detail before comparing it to Java. I wanted to say to the author, "I already know C++. That's why I bought this book. Skip this C/C++ lesson and get to the Java". The even bigger frustration I had was this book assumed you knew some C but didn't assume you know C++ at all. It took the time to introduce concepts like Objects and polymorphism and explained the C programmers what a class is in case they never used C++.

If you already know C++ this book won't really help you any more than any standard Java book. Skip this one and find a highly reviewer Java book or just sticks to Sun's online reference.

This book really helped introduce me to java having come from a C/C++ background. The book covers all the hot topics. Daconta provides complete ( and lengthy ) examples which thoroughly cover java programming concepts. My biggest gripe is the index ... it is practically useless! I find myself reaching for this book, knowing damn well what I am looking for is in there, but unable to find it without browsing thru hundreds of pages. Also this is not a good book for brief examples that illustrate java features in a few lines of code or less.

In the meantime, I've scrutinized the book more thoroughly. I've written the 1st review after comparing moslty the I/O and AWT chapters, the two being the worst of most Java books (and these two chapters are still as worse as they were in the 1998, Java 1.2 edition). As these chapters were similar to the previous edition, I thought the entire book is just a rehash too. However, other chapters are really updated, which I will also write about in the next review to be posted soon.

Werner Zsolt.