Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

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?

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.

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.

This book is not for beginners. After a few chapters of reading I realized the claim that this book is suitable for novices was just a marketing lie imposed by the publisher to sell as many books as possible. The authors take huge concepts and then cram them into very short chapters while offering very detached examples. I kept reading wondering when anything would be tied back into anything else. A better approach would be to build a program from the basics, all the way to it's application. That is, to use the same example and BUILD upon it. That would show the relevance of all the new concepts constantly introduced. The exercises in the book are equally bad and the questions are retarded. The questions cover the most basic and irrelevant information. It is as though you read a chapter on differential equations and are then asked "Now, what is two plus two?" The authors are OBVIOUSLY not teachers but high-tech nerds, intelli-bots who imagine themselves to be geniuses as is evident from style, comments, and dedications. I should have taken a closer look before buying this book. Do not buy this book unless you are already familiar with programming!

I got this book a couple hours ago in hopes of learning Java 6 multithreading. I found that I was able to fly through about 16 of the days with no problem.

However, there were numerous errors, which I think were probably due to unrefined editing. Some things appeared to have been explained by the author, but editing for clarity made the text inconsistent with code listings. So, it looks like the opposite effect was achieved.

One chapter even referred to a previous chapter's threading explanation, when in fact, there was no previous explanation (unless I missed it). I wasn't totally confused because of it, it just looked like there was a disconnect between the editor and author's versions.

Regardless, if you have a pretty good grasp on programming at least in one language, you can kind of figure out what the author really meant. However, if you are inexperienced, or perhaps like to trust things word for word, and get angry when the book makes no sense, you'll be disappointed with how misleading some things can be.

Although it's not a perfect book, and the editing leaves much to be desired, overall I liked it personally because it hit all the things I wanted to know: how Java files and libraries are structured, JAR, multi-threading, networking, byte streams, and GUI programming without an IDE.

I gave it 3 stars because it could have been so much better, but there were too many errors to call it a better than average book. I liked it though.

This is a good book for a beginner who is just approaching Java. They definitely take the "for Dummies" approach here and assume that you have little to no knowledge of programming from the start. The one gripe that I have is that all of the JDK installation and configuration appendices cover Windows only. It would have been nice to see alternate instructions for Linux/UNIX/Mac OS.

I found the book to be very poorly written. I felt there were parts that required more information, more code listings instead of code snippets. I also didn't feel like I was learning much either. Certain things were worded in a way I couldn't comprehend well, and thus making me go look it up on Sun's website. I also didn't like that unrelated features were added to code listings, as it caused some confusion.

Everything else I was going to say others have already said. no point in repeating, just giving my two cents. or two stars.

Appendix A "teaches" you how to get the JDK (java development kit) configured. It is a night mare for someone like me, a beginner. Here are the problems:

1) It wasn't mentioned in the "Running Programs in MS-DOS" that you are supposed to restart your computer after configuring the environment variables, the only place it was mentioned was for Experienced users, and I'm not one of them! Do you know how long it took me to figure that out! I had to reread Appendix A three times! And guess!

2) No where in Appendix A was it mentioned for the "inexperienced user" that you need to include a period for the class path. It was only mentioned for the "experienced user" which, I am not! I skipped over the "experienced user" instructions, because the book said, "For inexperienced MS-DOS users, the following section covers in detail how to set the PATH and CLASSPATH variables on a Windows system" --FALSE!!!!

3)The website tutorial for appendix a touches on the period issue, but not well enough. It has this ".;" which I thought was a typo because no where else was it mentioned. And the picture on the site showed the period after the semi-colon. What the heck?

Please GOD, don't let the rest of the book be this way!

The only thing I like about the book is the one day at a time approach. Any one else know of a good alternative to this book?

The "Teach Yourself Java" series of books either authored or co-authored by Laura Lemay has been a good one, dating back to 1996 when its primary concern was teaching web programmers how to design splashy looking applets. The focus has changed with the times, and this is a pretty good book for readers whose skill levels vary from those that are somewhat new to programming to those who are experienced in previous versions of Java. However, if you are in the latter group you might be somewhat bored with much of the material since the book spends a good bit of time teaching Java from the ground up. Thus, this book isn't really about Java 6. This book is actually about teaching you Java, and it just happens to incorporate Java 6 as the version it is using. It is not some kind of "Early Adopter" book for readers just seeking information on the new features of Java. The book has a learn by doing approach in which you create several programs each day that demonstrate the concepts being introduced. There should be a companion website with the source code for these programs as well as other supplementary material, but although the website is active, these features are not present at the time I am writing this. The book does a very good job of introducing each topic incrementally and starting with small pieces of code and then building on them, explaining everything each step of the way. Each chapter concludes with a summary, Q&A session, a Quiz, and exercises. The quiz includes the kinds of questions you'd expect to see on a Java programming certification test, and the answers are either immediately following the questions in the case of simple questions, or they are supposed to be at the book website in the case of more complex ones. The exercises are almost exclusively programming assignments. Once again, when it is active, solutions should be available at the book's website. The book has the following format:

In the first week, you learn about the Java language itself:
Day 1 covers the basics--what Java is, why to learn the language, and how to create software using an innovative style of development called object-oriented programming. You create your first Java application.
On Day 2, you dive into the fundamental Java building blocks--data types, variables, and expressions.
Day 3 goes into detail about how to deal with objects in Java--how to create them, use their variables, call their methods, and compare them.
On Day 4, you give Java programs cognitive skills using conditionals and work with arrays and loops.
Day 5 fully explores the creation of classes--the basic building blocks of any Java program.
On Day 6, you discover more about interfaces and packages, which are useful for grouping classes and organizing a class hierarchy.
Day 7 covers three powerful features of Java--exceptions, the ability to deal with errors; threads, the ability to run parts of a program simultaneously; and assertions, a technique for making programs more reliable.

Week 2 is dedicated to the most useful classes created by Sun for use in your own Java programs:
On Day 8, you are introduced to data structures that you can use as an alternative to strings and arrays--vectors, stacks, maps, hash tables, and bit sets--and a special for loop that makes them easier to use.
Day 9 begins a 5-day exploration of visual programming. You learn how to create a graphical user interface using Swing, an extensive set of classes for interfaces, graphics, and user interactions.
Day 10 covers more than a dozen interface components that you can use in a Java program, including buttons, text fields, sliders, scrolling text areas, and icons.
Day 11 explains how to make a user interface look good using layout managers, a set of classes that determine how components on an interface are arranged.
Day 12 concludes the coverage of Swing with event-handling classes, which enable a program to respond to mouse clicks and other user interactions.
On Day 13, you learn about drawing shapes and characters on a user interface component such as an applet window.
Day 14 demonstrates how to use Java Web Start, a technique that makes installation of a Java program as easy as clicking on a web page link, and SwingWorker, a class that improves application performance by using threads.

Week 3 moves into advanced topics:
Day 15 covers input and output using streams, a set of classes that enable file access, network access, and other sophisticated data handling.
Day 16 introduces object serialization, a way to make objects exist even when no program is running. You learn to save them to a storage medium, such as a hard disk, read them into a program, and then use them again as objects.
On Day 17, you extend your knowledge of streams to write programs that communicate with the Internet, including socket programming, buffers, channels, and URL handling.
Day 18 shows how to connect to relational databases using Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) and JDBC-ODBC. You learn how to exploit the capabilities of Derby, the open source database that's included for the first time in Java 6.
Day 19 covers how to read and write RSS documents using the XML Object Model (XOM), an open source Java class library. RSS feeds, one of the most popular XML dialects in use today, enable millions of people to follow site updates and other new web content.
Day 20 explores how to write web services clients with the language and the Apache XML-RPC class library.
Day 21 covers servlets and Java Server Pages - techniques for writing Java applications that are run by web servers.

gives many good examples to help understand the abstractions in java--I am currently reading a public library book--the book has not delivered yet.