Customer Reviews

Sams Teach Yourself Visual Café 2 in 21 Days

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

 

 

This is the first book that tied together the "Visual" tools (like Visual Basic, Visual RPG, etc.) with the Java language & Cafe. The UC Irvine instructor did not draw the parallel because he did not use Visual Basic, and did not like HTML -- the UCI instructor could not run a Cafe project! This book does it in step-by-step chapters with practical exercises. You finally see the connection between the "Visual" tools and the java code -- and it makes java easier to learn. So I like it. I just bought an upgrade to Visual Cafe (2.0 to 3.0 database) (Oracle Light), and I need a PC-to-AS400 tool. Cafe will be it. I use Visual Basic 6.0, Visual RPG, Visual J++ I am an RPG pgmr and thus have other paradigms to "overcome" in using OOP. This beats a college course if you don't mind reading.

guy@swarc.com must have spent even less time looking at the book than he claims. My copy of the book (bundled with Symantec Cafe - note correct product title) described release 1.2 even though the bundled software was release 1.51. These versions are based on Java 1.0.2. The product referred to by the afore-mentioned reviewer is Visual Cafe for Java 2.x, based on Java 1.1.x. No wonder the book didn't match the product! The book itself is fair but doesn't get deep enough to be fully helpful; however, because it is a couple of years out of date it belongs back on the shelf next to your books on Fortran II and BAL.

I find that the book is good but only if u skip the first few chapters and head straight to where u start using the Java AWT classes. That was where i started rocking and rolling with Java, whereas i was still in a daze in the first few chapters. Good examples too. One note is to use the correct version of VCafe, I used the version 2.5 and there was no problem at all with the example codes. One grouse is the lack of client/server examples. Otherwise, this is a good buy.

This book is so bad I could tolerate reading only the first four chapters and only spot-checked the rest of the book.

The title of the book is the first hint of problems: Symantec's product name is "Visual Cafe for Java 2," not "Visual Cafe 2." The book was apparently written from an alpha or beta release of the product, and not reviewed against the final release. The many samples and explanations of code generated by Visual Cafe for Java are wrong -- the basic structure of the generated code differs, and the book shows many uses of deprecated functions fixed in the actual product release.

The editing is terrible. Typical errors include calling the C++ "typedef" statement a "type" statement and getting the formal syntax of the Java "if" statement wrong! I examined the chapter on threading in detail. It described only how to start a very simple thread, ignored key issues, and gave no attention to synchronization issues.

You'll be better off reading the user manual that accompanies Visual Cafe for Java 2 and getting a good book on Java like Horstmann's & Cornell's Core Java 1.1.

This book seem to cover most of the topics about Visual Cafe 2.0,but most of the important details were left out. The author tried to attract the buyers with the fancy content and introduction.