Rating: 
Summary: Fantastic
Review: I've never had a tech book hold my attention like this. The author uses everything from cartoons to crossword puzzles to keep up interest. The one thing that I was surprised with was how much I was actually able to retain. When I first looked at the book, I though that it would definitely be a change of pace, but I concerned with whether it would be a waste of time. When you first open it you see big, cartoon writing and tons of pictures with cloud captions. These are all well conceived distractions to break up the reading while still reinforcing the topics.
The author has a knack for finding creative ways to hammer home a subject. My only regret is that I hadn't found this series sooner.
Rating:
Summary: How to REALLY learn Java ....
Review: Buy this book!I bought several copies for my staff, many of whom are mainframe/COBOL programmers. Even after Sun training, many of them were still struggling with Objects and the Java class libraries. This was the book that turned on the light for most of them.
Rating: 
Summary: A very useful introduction
Review: First off, this is not a detailed book of every feature of the Java language. It is also not an intense look at the foundations of the language. Neither of those is what I was looking for. I wanted to be able to sit down, read a book and be able to write working code I understood in an afternoon. I liked that this book wasn't written "for Dummies". It assumes some basic level of smarts from it's reader. At times it is still repeats itself a bit too often, but I could also see how the other explanations could be useful to other people. It is writen to explain both "how" and "why", without getting into "why exactly..." and "how in particular..." Yes, the style is garish and overdone, but at the same time it is well constructed, well written and will help you learn the language.
From here you can go on to more specific volumes, but if you've read this you'll be able to understand them.
Rating:
Summary: Fantastic
Review: "I wish I had this book when I was first starting to learn Java 5 years ago -- absolutely the best Java newbie book to date. I can't wait to get Kathy Sierra's new book on EJB." Eric Thoman; Director, Manchester Java User's Group
Rating:
Summary: Great book! Well written and informative.
Review: As someone who teaches Java, I'm really impressed with how cleverly the book engages the user without dumbing down the material. Most highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Nice Java book that really excites me
Review: I had learnt a few procedural languages before and I forget most of them. I tried reading just about every entry level Java books and I kind of gave up because there's not enough stamina to finish. Java is pretty much like C until the OO things comes in. That's where I find it difficult to remember things: the method name, the variable names alone are too much too remember. So any book on Java that writes two paragraphes without finishing telling a concept/point is not going to cut it for me. I ran into this book and I find it very concise and fun. All the little rules are presented so neatly together. I like it a lot and finished 80 some pages without a break. I am in Chapter 7 now and I can tell you I am kicking without real efforts. I shall write a complete review if that's allowed. Happy reading!
Rating:
Summary: An extraordinary achievement!!
Review: A huge amount of information packed into 700 pages! Make that 700 entertaining pages - pages that you could actually read sequentially. Head First Java could be compared to a 'dummies' book in some respects, but is really much, much more. Readability, memorability, and expertise set this book apart from the pack. If you're new to Java, or haven't progressed beyond trivial applets, this book is for you. The introduction to Object Oriented programming makes this book a valuable purchase for anyone who will use OO, even if they will never use JAVA. (Let's face it, PERL is infinitely superior to JAVA, but this book just can't be beat!) On the off-chance that you are 35 years old, still live with your mother, and read IEEE publications for their humorous content this book is not for you!
Rating:
Summary: Makes other books look like the API
Review: In short, it's a great book. It will make all your other Java books
indistinguishable from a printed copy of the API. This is how to
actually understand Java. I kept yelling "So THAT's how it works!" at
least once a chapter. It's really amazing how much I realized I didn't
know. Well, didn't understand. I knew stuff and could do the right
syntax and all that but now I think I really get Java a lot more. In
particular OO and polymorphism which, let's face it, are the kind of
thing that seem simple at first but are slippery to really get ahold of. The exercises are excellent. I think I could learn more from just the
Head First exercises than from the other books on Java I've bought,
combined. When you buy this, do them all at least once. I want to point out one particular thing they do with the weirder
concepts. They'll introduce and explain a topic, and then you go to the
next page and there's a picture of someone going "Huh???" And the text
will say yeah, this is a weird concept, and start again and explain it a
different way. And then clarify it again. By then you really do
understand it. I think this is great because it acknowledges that some
of these concepts are just hard to learn. No matter how brilliant you are or
whether you're the love child of Bill Joy and Carly Fiorina. You absolutely must have this book if you want to learn Java, and you
absolutely must have this book if you've been programming for a couple
years but you have to admit deep down you're still a little fuzzy on a
how things really work.
Rating:
Summary: A converted skeptic, now I'm hooked.
Review: I was skeptical when I heard about this book, and even MORE skeptical when I saw it (at the JavaOne conference). At first glance, it looks like an explosion at the graphics factory. But it was fun to flip through, so I started looking at some of the pages, and I realized that I was learning things just looking at the pictures, that I hadn't known before. Whoever thinks this is a 'dummies book' hasn't read it, but I can see how it might appear that way if you don't really get into it.
This is a learning book, the authors go to great lengths to make that clear, and to explain the learning principles behind all the visuals. I have read three Java books, and even taken a two-day intro course, but there were still many key pieces that I didn't quite get until I worked through this book. I think its really important to do the exercises (I think the puzzles are optional).
I got through this book much faster than with the other books that cover the same topics (I won't give the book names, and they were very good books, but I can understand them better now that I really learned the topics from Head First Java), and now I understand some things much better than I had before. Things like OO concepts in particular, but also some of the distributed programming topics.
One nice thing about this book is that it makes even the advanced topics seem easy. I have the feeling sometimes that books make things even more complicated than they should be, and I am not sure why that is. Maybe it is because so many text books cover a topic in such detail (and with so many words) that you have a hard time getting just the key points out of it, so that you can understand and it and USE it.
There is a large optional exercise that covers several chapters, that uses JavaSound -- it is a multi-user, networked midi drum machine. If you are not into midi music, you might not want to take the time to go through it (but I think that is why they say it is optional), because it spend a fair amount of time teaching you about something (the sound API) that you will probably never use. But I thought it was a lot of fun, and I learned a lot more Java from it. And I am now building a 'learning music' application as a result of getting started with that. If you see it in a store, take the time to read some pages, or look at the sample chapters before you say it's a dummies book. It is definitely not a dummies book! I really don't consider myself a dummy, I just prefer it when things are clear.
I guess there are some people who will not like this style, and it does seem geared toward a younger audience (I am 45, but I have teenagers in the house). But it was the right choice for me, and I think it will probably be the right choice for most people trying to learn Java for the first time (or in my case, the third or fourth time). I wish this had been the first Java book I had picked up. Yes, there is a certain amount of 'cute', but I will never forget some of this content simply BECAUSE those pictures are in my head. So in some ways, I guess it like having an annoying radio commercial or song that you can't stop humming. You might not necessarily like it, but you can't forget it.
They claim this is part of the learning principles behind it -- that if you store information as both a picture and text, it is in two different parts of your brain, and doubles your chance of recalling it. It is a very differrent experience, and I guess that people who are more comfortable with traditional methods might not like it. I happen to like things that are off-beat, and this was the perfect way for me to learn. One problem is that now I am hooked on this style and it's going to be harder for me to go back to learning things with text books. I am waiting for them to apply this format to other things I need to learn. O'Reilly are you listening?
Rating:
Summary: This is really cool !!
Review: I'm pumped! Coming from a C and VB background I needed to get into Java and OO in a big way. This book did a great job of getting me fluent in all the important OO concepts. The other thing that might be surprising, is that the book covers some important advanced concepts, like RMI, threads, and listeners.The book doesn't pretend for a minute to be a reference book, and I for one am thrilled. This book claims to be a learning book and I agree whole-heartedly. I'm sick of trying to learn technical topics from reference books, I'd prefer to use reference books for reference! Look no further if you actually want to learn Java and OO.
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