Rating: 
Summary: Why do people like book?
Review: This book can and will only appeal to people who are used to the frenetic pace of MTV. If you aren't one of those people who have an attention span measured in picoseconds, avoid this book like the plague. It will give you a headache and you won't learn anything. It is simply a dummies book from O'Reilly. It is a horrid choice for most programmers as we think linearly and think cute is bad... You would be much better off with the classics books to learn Java. For example, you can't beat "Thinking in Java" (for beginners), "Just Java" (if you want humour) or "Core Java" (for the serious people)
Rating: 
Summary: Learning is fun again!
Review: As soon as I started reading Head First Java, I knew I would like it. The format held my interest, and the exercises were fun to do. I didn't skip the exercises like I usually do with other books, where they sometimes seem too easy. And I find that I remember the concepts I learned. I am fairly new to Java, and before I read this book, I found some of the concepts confusing, including OO concepts. I now have a much better understanding of the Java language and OO. In the past, I've learned from the traditional type of text book, but the explanations in Head First Java seemed much easier to understand and remember, and the humor and graphics made it fun. It has the usual errors and typos, but they didn't distract from my learning experience. Now I better understand what I read in my Java reference books. I recommend this book to anyone who would like to learn or better understand Java, as long as you don't mind having fun while you learn. I am very much looking forward to seeing other books in this series!
Rating:
Summary: The Best Book in the WORLD!
Review: Man this book rock the Java world big time. I love to do the exercises, there so easy. Head Frist your nubmer 1
Rating: 
Summary: Revised Opinion
Review: I'm trying to edit my previous review, as I was harsher than needed. In fact the first exercise is technically correct. Even after I realized that, I didn't like the fact that it is obscure code when done. The authors may believe that a tricky piece of code makes a good first problem for a student, but I think it is liable to be merely frustrating for many.
The writing is fascinating and engaging, but I wonder if a different style of exercises might be better for most people learning a computer language? I also wonder how many people bother to do exercises in books, perhaps I'm a little dotty to be trying or concerned.
I would have been better off thinking of them as entertaining puzzles rather than teaching tools. As puzzles they are entertaining, but I think only a small number of people learn best by only looking at challenging material from the beginning.
Perhaps the kind of mind that could develop the innnovative text material can't help but develop innovative exercises. In my own opinion, a set of exercises ranging from simple to complex gives a student some confidence and a picture of how well they grasp the material. The exercises should both reinforce the lesson and give the student some hope.
Despite my problems with the exercises, if you are tired of boring texts about Java with the only variance being the level of formality, you'll find Head First Java a refreshing change of pace and a very entertaining way to be educated.
Rating:
Summary: This is the only best book i found for fundamentals in java
Review: i can say using this book is the only best way to learn java, the techniques the authors used in explaining very abstract concepts are very helpful for me, i was not able to stop reading the book as i was understanding each and every concept the book explains in such a easy way which was supposed to be very difficult when i was reading other java books, if u miss this book you are really missing some thing in learning java. I was programming in java from the past few months , i was utterly confused the way objects worked and communicated, what made me to think for months was cleared within minutes after reading this book, i really cant wait to thank the authors as they really revolutionized the way of writing books.
Rating:
Summary: A different kind of Java book for beginners and experts
Review: When I first saw "Head First Java", it reminds me of the colorful "conversational English" books I had when I started to learn English years ago. The casual, humorous books have turned out effective for English language learning. Is that style good for the Java language learners as well? Is this type of books for beginners only? With those questions in mind, I started to read "Head First Java". Since I consider myself a Java expert (I wrote a Java book myself, after all), I decided that I would NOT read the book from cover to cover. Instead, I would randomly flip through the book for the humorous stories and photos. I figured that if I cannot learn much new about Java from a "beginner" book, I can at least have some fun. Geez, I was wrong. I was ADDICTED to the book's short stories, annotated code snippets, mock interviews, puzzle games and brain exercises. They are not only entertaining but also informative. It may be a beginner's book but the stuff they cover are definitely deep enough for expert readers as well (e.g. multiple inheritance, polymorphism, inner classes, threads, RMI, ... just to name a few). The best of all is that I can actually remember the things I learned from the book because I associate them with the stories and pictures. I guess it has something to do with the fact that both sides of my brain are active when reading this book: The right side is for the stories and the left side is for the technical and logic stuff. There are other great Java books (e.g. "Thinking in Java" by Bruce Eckel) in the market. But they are all very serious and require the readers to spend hours to read entire chapters. The great thing about "Head First Java" is that the bite-size code snippets and stories allow me to learn something about Java in my 5-10 minutes spare time, one piece a time. The overall writing style is casual and enlightened. The presentation style (fonts and placements of graphical elements) fits the content very well. The book covers a wide variety of Java topics including: basic code structure and language syntax, OOP concepts, math and numbers, exception handling, the Swing GUI library, serialization, network, and distributed computing. Of course, the casual style is not for everyone. I know people who love the re-assuring feeling from "serious" books. But I can re-assure you that Kathy and Bert are authoritative figures in the Java training community. The content is absolutely first class. I highly recommend "Head First Java" for both Java beginners and expert readers.
Rating:
Summary: Helped with OO, but not much else. (Revised)
Review: I'm revising my review yet again. The reason is that I've read more Java books now and have come back to this one for a few reasons. I'll explain below. I'm a C programmer and needed to understand the Object Oriented ways of programming. I understood the general syntax of Java, but got a bit lost when dealing with the OO (Object Oriented) areas. Since my current job is wanting me to learn Java for a few projects, they sent me to a 1 week crash course on Java, which didn't really help too much. A week later, I picked up this book. There weren't any reviews on this book yet, so I just picked it up in [local store]one afternoon and started reading the introduction. Based on the introduction, I found it to be a book I wanted to actually buy. The introduction gave some great pointers on studying, how the common brain works and such. After buying it, 5 chapters in I was loving this book. As a matter of fact, I loved reading this book all the way through. It was quite an entertaining book. However, entertaining isn't always helpful. There were some areas that I think are much needed in programming texts that were either left to a vague description in the Appendix, or left out all together. Despite all of the pictures and weird layout of the book, it did an *excellent* job at explaining Object Orientation. I think what helped me out the most were the little "Java Exposed" interviews with the parts of Java. While these were kind of silly, they truly did help me understand the material better. Also, the "Bullet Points" were a great help as well. It did what I wanted it to do, and that was to help me get a firm understanding of OO. Also, the fact that it goes over I/O very well and also spends some time going over a bit of GUI development, made this book even better. What this book did help me learn was Object Orientation. What it did not help me learn were a lot of the finer points of Java. These areas (such as why you should override equals() and hashCode() and what their tie-ins are) most definitely should be looked into by either reading some other books (Java 2 Sun Certified Programmer & Developer ISBN: 0072226846 is great!) or going to the java.sun.com site and reading their documentation. There are some finer points of Java that just weren't covered in the book due to it being a beginners guide. However, please seek further knowledge and don't consider this book the do all/say all of the entire Java language. All in all, this book is great. I still wish they would of added some more small items such as a simple explanation of finalize() in the garbage collection chapter and also explain the purpose and maybe even a quick example of how to overried the equals() and hashCode() methods properly since they tend to talk about how important it is in the book. Anyway, now that I've read more Java books, I've found this one to be the most pleasing so far. Hope this helped.
Rating:
Summary: Dynamic Outside-the-Box Tipping-Point!!!
Review: Very engaging and full of fun, Head First Java is like Monty Python meets the gang of four. An excellent introduction into Java or programming in general. The book made me laugh out loud several times. The text is broken up so well by puzzles and stories, quizzes and examples, that you cover ground like no computer book before. My only real complaint with the technique is that it felt a little juvenile at times. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Rating:
Summary: Who said learning could not be fun.
Review: I had the pleasure of reading Head First Java as Kathy & Bert turned out the chapters. Though the book has not hit the stores yet, I'd like to share my experience reading the work copy of the book. I'm a 47 year old programmer that has basically seen it all in my 25+ years in IT. Though I've been busy with Java for more than 2 years, I until recently still saw myself as an absolute beginner. Why you might ask? Well for starters all my Java was simply "hobby" work, I did not use it at work. Secondly, and the most important reason, is that I simply did not understand and grasp some of the key concepts of OO that one needs to know to be able to fully use the capabilities Java has to offer. As fate would have it, the work copy Kathy & Bert's book became available to me as I started to work in a new department where I have to program in Java. I was drowning. I had to keep on asking the youngsters on the team for assistance. You can't believe what that does for your self-confidence. But as I read more and more of Head First Java I found myself sitting in tech meetings not only understanding what was being said but I was actually coming up with some fresh ideas that helped us re-design our systems to become fully OO. Why is that so. Simply because of the unique way Kathy and Bert teach and share their knowledge. The best way for me to describe this book is by using the teacher at school that we all have encountered in our school careers. You know the one that enthusiastically drew the most elaborate drawing on the black board to explain his point, the one that simply generates interest in his subject purely because of his sheer love of the subject he teaches. Now imagine that teacher in book form. The Head First way, your favourite teacher in a book. I can carry on for quite awhile about the unique style of the Head First way, but I suggest you download the sample chapters at O'Reilly or go download the "demo" at Kathy & Bert's own site... What has this book done for me. For one it finally made me grasp Polymorphism, and the use of interfaces. Though I've used it before, like a parrot without understanding, I never saw it's real strength. Now I use it all the time. I can't believe I programmed Java without them. Head First Java turned me into a Java OO programmer instead of a Java procedural programmer. Yep one can write pretty neat procedural programs in Java. If you are a Java programmer that has problems understanding the finer points of the language and OO in general I suggest you go out and buy the book. I want to end with a word of caution. This book, because of it's uniqueness, might not appeal to everybody. I suggest you browse (or download the demo) the book before buying. You will know immediately know if the book is for you. If you want learning to be fun buy this book.
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.
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