Customer Reviews

Visual J++ Bible

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It seems that authors of the book didn't put enough time reviewing sample code in the book, it is written in weird style with tons of errors. Code is non-readible, writing style is the worst I've seen, they try to imitate C-style coding and just couldn't do it,code infested with missing parethesis, brackets, misplaced keywords, etc... Bottom line, buy Ivor Horton's book on Java instead!

I bought this book with the ancipation of learning Visual J++. Although the book contains large amounts of code, which I liked, there are virtually no explanations. I wanted not only to see the code but see an explanation of what is occuring with each statement. Entire functions and classes are presented with explanations like "creates images" or "gets graphics". How? Why? If all you want is to learn by example, this book will do it for you. If you want explanations of the code, then look somewhere else. Perhaps this is the way the authors intended it, but I was greatly dissapointed.

The Visual J++ Bible is a great reference, but if you're like me and you just want to learn the language, it still leaves something to be desired. Although it is a reference, it's not a reference for the language as much as it is for some cool Java applets. In fact, this book seems to be a demonstration of the authors' skill as programmers rather than as writers or teachers. For example, the programs on the included CD-ROM work great, but they just don't match the code printed in the book - and any explanation of the difference is completely lacking. (Emails to all four co-authors only yielded an explanation from one of them that he wasn't responsible and didn't even have a copy of the book.) If you want a book full of code that you can copy, however, this is it. It does a great job of providing code that you might take weeks, months, or maybe never figure out how to duplicate. The included Java applets are well organized, reasonably well explained (although, if you're like me and you want to know why everything is done, you're not going to be satisfied). The "Visual J++ Bible" also explains how Java became J++ in the Microsoft world and gives you the straight story about the differences. You get useful knowledge to help you choose between NOISy Java (Novell/Netscape, Oracle, IBM, and Sun) and Microsoft Java.