Sams Teach Yourself Java 6 in 21 Days (5th Edition) [Paperback]

Rogers Cadenhead (Author), Laura Lemay (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0672329433 | ISBN-13: 978-0672329432 | Publication Date: June 4, 2007 | Edition: 5

“If you get only one Java book, it should be Sams Teach Yourself Java in 21 Days”   –PC Magazine

 

In just 21 days, you can acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to develop three kinds of programs with Java: applications on your computer, servlets on a web server, and browser-launched Java Web Start applications.

 

No previous programming experience required. By following the 21 carefully organized lessons in this book, anyone can learn the basics of Java programming.

 

Learn at your own pace. You can work through each chapter sequentially to make sure you thoroughly understand all of the concepts and methodologies, or you can focus on specific lessons to learn the techniques that interest you most.

 

Test your knowledge. Each chapter ends with a Workshop section filled with questions, answers, and exercises for further study. There are even certification practice questions.

 

“Sams Teach Yourself Java is one of the best introductions to hands-on Java programming. If you buy one book on Java, this is the one to buy!”  –Independent Web Review

 

• Completely revised, updated, and expanded to cover the latest features of Java 6
• Learn to develop standalone Java applications, web servlets, JavaServer Pages, and Java Web Start applications
• Easy-to-understand, practical examples clearly illustrate the fundamentals of Java programming
• Discover how Swing can help you quickly develop programs with a graphical user interface
• Find out about JDBC database programming, Internet client/server programming, and XML parsing with the open source XOM class library
• Covers new features of version 6 such as Java DB, the new relational database that is now a built-in
• part of Java

 

Rogers Cadenhead is a web application developer who has written 22 books on Internet-related topics, including Sams Teach Yourself Java 2 in 24 Hours. He maintains this book’s official website at http://www.java21days.com.

 

Laura Lemay is one of the world’s most popular authors on Web development topics. She is the author of the bestselling Sams Teach Yourself Web Publishing with HTML, as well as Sams Teach Yourself Perl in 21 Days.

 

CD-ROM includes:

• Source code for the examples developed in the book
• Java™ SE Development Kit 6
• NetBeans™ IDE 5.5
• Bonus materials

 

Category:  Java Programming

Covers:  Java 6 Platform Standard Edition

User Level:  Beginning—Intermediate

 

$44.99 USA / $55.99 CAN / £31.99 Net UK (inc. of VAT)

 

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Rogers Cadenhead is a web application developer and author. He has written 22 books on Internet-related topics, including Sams Teach Yourself Java in 24 Hours. He’s also a web publisher whose sites receive more than 24 million visits per year. He maintains this book’s official website at http://www.java21days.com and a personal weblog at http://www.cadenhead.org.

 

Laura Lemay is a technical writer and author. After spending six years writing software documentation for various computer companies in Silicon Valley, she decided that writing books would be much more fun. In her spare time, she collects computers, email addresses, interesting hair colors, and nonrunning motorcycles. She is also the perpetrator of Sams Teach Yourself Web Publishing with HTML in a Week and Sams Teach Yourself Perl in 21 Days and a personal weblog at http://blog.lauralemay.com.

 

 

 

Product Details

• Paperback: 720 pages
• Publisher: Sams; 5 edition (June 4, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0672329433
• ISBN-13: 978-0672329432
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #102,287 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

36 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Well done but did anyone bother to copyedit?, December 12, 2007

By 

Daniel Taller "Daniel Taller" (Long Island, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sams Teach Yourself Java 6 in 21 Days (5th Edition) (Paperback)

Having had incredible success from The Visual Basic edition of this same title line, I was optimistic about this book. I was quite intimidated by Java but this book has not disappointed me in terms of making me interested and making it easy to learn.

However, I am only now finished with chapter 2 and have found an overwhelming amount of errors in quantity and severity. There are errors in the definitions of primitive types, there is a total mess in one of the code samples... one sample has several lines of code completely reversed, while the comments inserted are the same for one section of code as they are for another section performing the exact inverse calculations! It is an utter mess.

I really hope these errors are cleaned up in the next edition of the book. I've already written to the author, and I'll either want a written guarantee for a free copy of the next edition, or I'm returning the book.

My fear is that as I progress, I will encounter errors that I'm not sharp enough in the language to catch, and will end up with confusion, frustration and time wasted.

So, from what I can tell so far, the book's technique seems like it will be very successful in teaching me the basics of the language, but if the quantity and severity of errors persist as I've seen thus far, I'd have to say that there's got to be a better alternative.

A person learning something brand new from a book should not have to be the one to discover and correct errors in the book. Who's teaching who?

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Good writing bad proofreading, August 6, 2007

By 

William M. Ames "William" (California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sams Teach Yourself Java 6 in 21 Days (5th Edition) (Paperback)

First le me say that as a professional developer with 20 years of C++ under my belt I found this book quite useful. It got me up to speed on how building Java applications differs from the same operations in C++. Unfortunately the book appears to be an introduction to java for beginners. I don't think a real beginner would find it easy to use.

First in most of the book minus signs have been omitted before negative numbers. Thus we are told that a byte has a range of 128 to 127, and a short has a range from 32,768 to 32,767. Anyone who can supply the minus signs doesn't need the information anyway. I saw some other mistakes I don't remember, and would probably found more if I hadn't skimmed many of the early chapters. Maybe the type setting program did this, but why would a company like SAMS let a book with this kind of errors get on the shelves.

If you already know how to program, and just want to transfer your skills to Java you can use this book. Most of the writing is clear, and so far all the code examples I have typed in compile and run. If you are a true beginner don't waste your money.

15 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars This does NOT cover java 6, July 19, 2008

By 

J. D. de Ruiter (Purmerend, the Netherlands) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sams Teach Yourself Java 6 in 21 Days (5th Edition) (Paperback)

I am a certified programmer for java 1.4, and I bought this book on the title alone to get me up to date with the upgrades to version 6. What a disappointment to find that annotations are not covered at all, and generics only partially. Furthermore the collections framework is largely ignored. I looks like a java 1.3 book with some added examples to make it look like a version 6 book, but it is NOT. So if you need a book to study for the certification exam, this book is definitely NOT the one to get.
I found it a complete waste of money.