Customer Reviews

Learn Java for Android Development

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Hello,

I'm the author of Learn Java for Android Development and would like to share some background information on why LJFAD is the way it is, in part to respond to the accusations of deception that have been made against me and this book.

Approximately one year ago, I was contacted by Apress to write LJFAD. I was given the book's title, Learn Java for Android Development, and told that this book would serve as a prequel to Apress's Beginning Android/Beginning Android 2 books. Because LJFAD would serve as a prequel, I was told that it could not focus on Android development.

After much thought, I decided to focus this book on Java language and API fundamentals, because the aspiring Android developer needs to understand the Java language and fundamental Java APIs (such as collections and threading) before diving into Android development. Android requires the developer to learn a lot of Android-specific knowledge (such as activities and resources), so it's a good idea to first have a solid understanding of the Java language and various APIs before jumping into Android.

To those who are accusing me of a deception, I wish you would first take the time to read the book's description on Amazon, which clearly states what this book is and is not. For example, consider the following sentence from the description:

"Learn Java for Android Development teaches programmers of any skill level the essential Java language and foundational Java API skills that must be learned to improve the programmer's s chances of succeeding as an Android app developer."

I don't know how much clearer I can be.

If this book had been titled "Learn Android Development", I could certainly understand the accusations. However, the emphasis is "Learn Java" (for Android development).

On a different subject, I understand that this book is densely packed with information, and that some readers will find this denseness difficult. Unfortunately, I found myself having to tradeoff simplicity for comprehensive coverage, because I really wanted to cover the entire Java language, and even offer smaller insights into minor items not easily found elsewhere. For example, did you know that Java provides access to an object's private fields under certain circumstances? You'll discover these circumstances in this book. When an author is originally tasked with writing 400 pages, and cannot exceed 600 pages, but still wants to be thorough, sometimes the resulting product isn't as nice as one might like, but it still contains the knowledge.

In closing, I apologize to each of you who feel you've been mislead, and to each of you who feel that the book is too difficult for you to comprehend. However, I still believe that this book has much value to offer, as a preparation for getting into Android development, and as a means for becoming a better Java developer -- you'll learn lots about Java generics and enums, for example.

Jeff "JavaJeff" Friesen

Although classified as a beginner's book, it should be noted that this book is not written for beginning programmers. If you are new to programming in general, start somewhere else and look at this book later. This comprehensive review of the Java language features takes the reader from the primitive data types to a whirlwind exposure to the standard Java libraries.

The good:

Learn Java for Android Development attempts to cover everything you might need to know about Java for purposes of Android development. Unlike many learning Java books, this book does not include information about Swing or Graphical programming. This is a big plus as those features of the language can be confusing for developers new to Java. Considering the book is aimed at Android developers, who won't be using Swing, it makes perfect sense.

While reading the book, I learned several new things about features coming in the release of JDK7. I even learned a few things about JDK5/6 that I can do better in my day to day development.

The book can serve as a quick reference for certain features of the language.

The author recognized that several important topics needed to be covered (XML parsing for example), but couldn't be due to the size of the book. He has stated that he will make some new chapters available for free on his website.

The bad:

The book attempts to tackle everything, and I do mean everything. Because of this, the book is very dense with material and at times difficult to read.

In many cases, example code was way too long and descriptions were way too short.

Although the title includes the word "Learning", I would not recommend this as a book for someone who wants to learn the Java language. It is obvious the author knows Java extremely well, however, I don't feel he does a good job of conveying that knowledge in a manner that flows. In many cases, I was overwhelmed by the examples given and felt confused by the sudden switch of topics.

While the book states that you are learning Java for the Android platform, very few references are actually made to Android.

Overall:

Overall, the book is OK. It can definitely serve as a reference for language features and would possibly be a useful book to own of you are an experience developer who is new to Java, but familiar with OO programming with another C type language (C++, C#, etc). Would I recommend this book to someone new to Java, who is not an advanced developer? No. Would I recommend this book to an experienced developer who is new to Java? Maybe. If you are the type of reader who appreciates short and to the point descriptions with an example to make it stick, you may enjoy this book. If you need a little more explanation for why something is being done or how it relates to other aspects of the language, this isn't the book for you. My rating: 3 stars. It is an OK book, but the reader needs to be aware of the intended audience before purchasing the book. I think the title can be a little misleading with that regards.

I recently was required to write some Android applications for my company and as such needed to brush up on Java. I think the last time that I did this was at university in CS I and II; anyway, I have found this book to be extremely helpful and complete. There have been some reviews that state this book is 'misleading'; which is hard to understand since the title of the book clearly states that this is a book that focuses on Java so that you may do Android development later. The author is obviously very knowledgeable about the subject matter and expresses ideas in a very clear way. I keep this book with me whenever I am doing any Android development mostly as a reference. I did work through the book when I first bought it from cover-to-cover as a refresher and found it to be enormously helpful.

Highly recommend for anyone that is going to be doing any serious Java development, whether it be Android or otherwise.

You Rock, JavaJeff!

Coming from some previous programming experience, I like this book. It is not an easy book, but the author has a really immense understanding of java, and a thoughtful style. Excellent brush up read on programming and Java from a very good source.

This book is geared towards someone that has some kind of programming background, because while it does touch on every topic it doesn't do it in a complete new learners way. This book is great for someone needing to brush up on the Java language before starting Android programming.

Clear, concise, thorough, and well presented.

1. The author's style of writing is very clear. You can tell he chose his words carefully and it is not laden with all kinds of flowery language.

2. The information is presented in a concise manner. I usually have to skip over entire sections or chapters of 'fluff' in other programming books. I was able to start with the very first chapter and didn't feel like I was wasting my time.

3. It doesn't read like a reference manual. Information flowed from subject to subject and I was able to absorb it quickly without becoming bored.

If you're a programmer who wants to get into Android development but you aren't that familiar with Java, then this book is definitely the first place to start.

I was going to write a long detailed review but I think all the positive comments cover it very well. As a 10 year programmer in Mainframe and Microsoft languages I am new to Java and the Mobile development environment (which I'm eager to dive into). I'm the type of person who likes to deep dive into those subjects I love. i.e. programming languages which are well thought out (hence my desire to move away from Microsoft). I digress. I've always been a big fan of Wrox and Apress books. I have to say that this book delivers exactly what it promises. It is packed full of knowledge for those who want it. A must have in my opinion if this is the sort of thing you want to get into. Peace out and happy coding.

This is a great book if you want to get up to speed on Java and start writing some android applications as quickly as possible. It covers all the basics of Java and various special features of the language that are helpful to know when writing android applications. It is also a great reference on various standard Java classes because it has 2 chapters dedicated to often used classes and methods and an excellent chapter on Java's I/O framework. As others have mentioned it's important to have some programming experience because this is most definitely not a tutorial on Java for beginners.

First let me state that this is a Java book, no deception here. If you read the description above, specifically the section entitled "Who this book is for" its very clear that it is a general Java book, not specifically for Android. The back cover of this book shows it as a predecessor to "Beginning Android 2" in the series. So, read this book for a very detailed introduction to Java before jumping into Java for Android development.

This book is a very good Java book. The authors depth of knowledge shows in nearly every section. I have been programming in java since its first beta, and found much useful information especially in chapters dealing with newer JDK 5,6, and upcoming concepts.

A couple of criticisms:
1. I agree with a previous reviewer about the density. This may be more of an editing issue then the authors issue. For example, I was looking up something about Annotations and a couple of the pages I read did require additional review to fully understand what was being said. On a positive note the material was complete and very useful.

2. And this may be somewhat of a nit, in a book about learning a new language, the coding style should exemplary. The author does not follow Sun's coding standard of always using {}'s for all 'if', 'for', etc. statements, even if they only contain one statement. By omitting the {}'s for single line 'if' or 'for' statements, it is very easy to introduce a bug, especially if coming from a language like Python where the blocks are defined by the indentation level. In Java, regardless of the indentation, if there are no {}'s then only the next line is part of the 'if' or 'for' construct.

In conclusion, even as an experienced Java developer, I would recommend this book for both new and experienced Java developers. As it is a new addition to my library, it is a very useful reference for the language.

This excellent and deep overview of Java as a preparation for Android development is a first class programming book--but this must be judged in the context of the author's intentions and assumptions. The most important assumption is that one seeking to perform development in the Android space must have a detailed and pervasive knowledge of the Java language (with the possible exception of some API's not available in the Android environment e.g., Swing). Secondly, the excellent coverage of the Java language presented here is best used by one with a mature understanding of modern programming languages and one who is willing to view detailed (but excellent) descriptions and examples -- not a whole batch of "Hello World" and "Guess the Number" 10 line examples.

In the first chapter a real and somewhat complex example involving a realistic card game is built from successively more detailed pseudocode descriptions and built in several pages of application code using the tools of the Java environment. Later chapters give a detailed (and illustrated by complex examples) picture of almost all major features of the Java language and a variety of API's that are shared by Oracle's Java Tools and which are also available under
Android.

This is an excellent tutorial coverage of the Java language and environment for the purpose of preparing a mature programmer to develop Android applications. It is not dumb-ed down for a non-technical audience.

--Ira Laefsky, MSE/MBA
IT Consultant and Researcher formerly on the Senior Consulting Staff of Arthur D. Little, Inc. and DIGITAL Equipment Corporation