Rating: 
Summary: Needs to be heavily edited!
Review: Java, Java, Java, like it's title, is unnecessarily repetitive in a dense, uninstructive way. As a textbook, this is definitely a head scratcher. It seems like the author wrote three or four different versions for each explanation and then left them all in. These repetitions each use different words which just cloud the explanations even further. For the beginner learning concepts at least, it is wordy, unclear, uses too many synonyms (which make it unclear as to whether they are referring to the same thing or not), is poorly laid out with too much repeated code, too many flow charts, and too few diagrams. There are too many asides and this breaks the continuity of the book even further. I had to buy this book for a summer course and I hope to learn Java despite it. Maybe it will be a good reference book for later on? Rather than giving up on it completely since it seems so comprehensive, I think that the author should be forced to cut it in half, word-wise, add some illustrations about the flow of data, and then show it to someone who doesn't know Java for the final edit.
Rating:
Summary: Needs to be heavily edited!
Review: Java, Java, Java, like it's title, is unnecessarily repetitive in a dense, uninstructive way. As a textbook, this is definitely a head scratcher. It seems like the author wrote three or four different versions for each explanation and then left them all in. These repetitions each use different words which just cloud the explanations even further. For the beginner learning concepts at least, it is wordy, unclear, uses too many synonyms (which make it unclear as to whether they are referring to the same thing or not), is poorly laid out with too much repeated code, too many flow charts, and too few diagrams. There are too many asides and this breaks the continuity of the book even further. I had to buy this book for a summer course and I hope to learn Java despite it. Maybe it will be a good reference book for later on? Rather than giving up on it completely since it seems so comprehensive, I think that the author should be forced to cut it in half, word-wise, add some illustrations about the flow of data, and then show it to someone who doesn't know Java for the final edit.
Rating: 
Summary: A companion book for novice programmer
Review: This book is meant to be read by the novice programmer interested in learning Java. The author covers the basics of the language and object oriented principles. The author also does a good job of whetting the reader's appetite to learn by introducing some of the features that made Java so popular, i.e. Applets, Client/Server and GUI development. I found it quite original to start with "object first" approach followed by programming fundamentals and topped up by more advanced topics. It is only natural that the author starts with easy introductory overview of objects, methods and applets to progressively builds up to more complex and advanced concepts such as exceptions,threads and recursions. The breadth of details given to exercises, examples, case studies, self-study, laboratory guide bears witnesses to the years of experience and amount of research works required to produce such a comprehensive masterpiece. I thoroughly recommend this book for all students or professionals who want to take a quick grasp of the fundamentals of Object Oriented Concepts
Rating:
Summary: dull, unclear, disorganized and vague
Review: This book is printed in a two color scheme that fails to draw attention to relevant points. Concepts are introduced with promises to be explained later. Components of code are not clearly explained. A sensation of being lost or of trying to stay awake during a long winded boring speech is what I found.Not good for the beginner.
Rating:
Summary: Not suitable either for beginners or experienced programmers
Review: This book was required for a college class I was taking in order to learn Java. Unfortunately, the book's organization and quality of writing are both lacking. The preface says the book "assumes no previous programming experience and requires no prior knowledge of Java or object-oriented programming." Don't you believe it. The organization is inappropriate for a beginning programming textbook; for example, chapter 1 has sections on I/O and qualified names and chapter 2 starts talking about objects. The text is a mish-mash of stuff that is supposed to be for beginners, interspersed with descriptions that would mystify a beginner, such as the following quote from chapter 2: "JAVA LANGUAGE RULE: Class Access. A public class is accessible to any other class, if its containing package is accessible. Otherwise, a class is accessible only to the other classes in its package. Whether a package is accessible or not is determined by the Java runtime system." Nor is this book useful to experienced programmers (including myself). The examples are too trite, and the description of the Java language features is inadequate. The book's index is not very helpful; for example, the term "constant" is not listed in the index at all. I have not finished this book. After reading a few chapters, I have decided to find another textbook to learn Java from.
Rating:
Summary: Definitely not for a class
Review: This is by far the worst book to introduce a programming language, and for a class no-less. Each chapter covers a huge, sometimes unrelated quantity of topics that would make a typical college student with a full time job to pay for school find extremely overwhelming to read. Looking through the slide presentations and reading the text can just take two hours alone to get a loose understanding at what is discussed - and that's a lenient statement! This may be a good book as a reference tool where time to lean concepts really isn't an issue, but as far as classroom studies go, where deadlines for projects are always fast approaching, this book makes it VERY difficult to review tough to understand topics. If you're getting into a class that uses this book - I'd strongly get a much much much better reference that can help explain concepts easier and much quicker.
Rating:
Summary: Worst Book I've Ever Bought
Review: This is the worst example of a textbook that I've ever seen. It gives lots of fluff and very little that is concrete...it doesn't even give you the basics of the language. Don't waste your money.
Rating: 
Summary: Review - What else?
Review: This text is very wordy, over 950 pages from cover to cover. While I do not dispute the accuracy of the content, I am not swayed one bit by the way the author presented it. The author writes the text like a novel, trying to lead the reader into certain conclusions with the hope that the impatient reader (like myself and the many others who need to pick this language up in a jiffy) will understand it. For those who have the luxury of countless of hours to read 900 pages, then this is an excellent book.
Rating:
Summary: You CAN learn from this book
Review: This was the first book on programming I purchased, when I decided to teach myself Java as my first language. I understand a lot of the other reader's gripes with the writing style; I often felt my eyes glazing over as I read, and often found myself going over and over the same material when I realized that I had missed an important point. I also wished that the solutions were available somewhere, and there are exercises in the book that I don't think I will ever solve. Some of the traits that distinguish this book from the others I have amassed in my collection of "beginning programming" books are as follows: 1) I have yet to find a book that devotes this much detail to strings and some common methods for processing them. After that chapter I felt that I could do most anything. 2) This book truly is aimed at the complete beginner. The author does not dive right into a bunch of topics at once. The book is well organized into basic programming concepts, and then increases in complexity at a comfortable speed. 3)The exercises (even when there is no solution available for the non-instructor) are decent and vary in complexity. I know that there are probably better, more comprehensive tutorials for the complete beginner, and anyone who happens to read this book first will want to move on to other books for newbies. This is a gentle, patient introduction to programming, and to Java, and it is a good springboard into more advanced topics. One final word, I found that it was helpful to ignore all of the examples and exercises related to AWT and SWING until I was comfortable with the basic techniques of programming.
Rating:
Summary: A very good intro book
Review: While there are some small errors (ie: spelling , etc), as others noted, I found this overall to be an excelent intro book. The fact that Morelli covers each subject from multiple angles is a GOOD thing , espcially in an intro book. Not all of us learn the same way after all. Now, perhaps I am a tad biased, as I go to Trinity (Professor Morelli is a CS Prof. here). However I must say my initial reaction to using a "locally" written book, was one of worry. I was, of course, pleasantly suprised to find the book very well written with plenty of examples, lots of neat little "tidbits" which are clearly marked as non-essential if you're trying to find the key theme. I wholeheartedly recommend this book for classes as well as for reference , heck, this almost puts the teacher out of work ! (a star is taken off for the occasional typographical error)
|
