Rating: 
Summary: Great, but only for intermediate student
Review: I read some other reviews here, and I saw one person getting rather angry, while another was full of praise. The situation can be uinderstood by noting that this is NOT a beginning level textbook, despite what the author might have intended. Although the author writes using simple and familiar phrases to try to make things clear, its still the case that what he is doing will not be understood by anyone who is completely new to the whole notion of objects. This book is best as a second or third book, to be read by someone who is already comfortable with what an object is. I suppose the way to view this book is that it is a needed gap-filler between the books getting readers to understand what an object is, and what it can do, and the advanced books addressed to experienced programmers who are already experts but just need to get the specifics of Java. What the book does is take a student who knows at least a boiler-plate idea of what objects are and work with him to develop a much more intuitive understanding. Having said that, I would say that this book is good at what it does. It presents a useful conceptual picutre of objects, which should be very helpful in designing programs, and in understanding code written by others.
Rating: 
Summary: This is a great introduction to OOP
Review: I really enjoyed this book. I am an unschooled "practical programmer," and OOP has been pretty much a mystery to me. I understand the concepts and examples when I see them, but haven't really thought in an object oriented way when I write my own code. This is the book that finally got me actually thinking and designing in objects. The explanations are splendidly clear and thorough. (The section on "recursion," to take one example, is inspired!) I recommend this book highly. It would be a good introduction to Java, or, as in my case, a great way to learn more about programming principles even if you have some experience with Java already.
Rating:
Summary: This is a great introduction to OOP
Review: I really enjoyed this book. I am an unschooled "practical programmer," and OOP has been pretty much a mystery to me. I understand the concepts and examples when I see them, but haven't really thought in an object oriented way when I write my own code. This is the book that finally got me actually thinking and designing in objects. The explanations are splendidly clear and thorough. (The section on "recursion," to take one example, is inspired!) I recommend this book highly. It would be a good introduction to Java, or, as in my case, a great way to learn more about programming principles even if you have some experience with Java already.
Rating: 
Summary: I Amno Weisser
Review: I think this book is not good. This is true for the majority ofcomputer textbooks, which is really annoying given that they are somuch more expensive than the norm. I am coming to the conclusion that there is something fundamentally wrong with the way most of these books are written. I think that as far as computer related books go Amazon should change their policy. Instead of using stars to rate books why not use tears or fists of hair. This is definitely a 4.5 tear book. I had to ring friends in search of comfort and encouragement through a number of chapters of this book. Try Real-Time-Systems by Krishna and Shin to get the full '5-tear' experience.) The standard of english in this book is very poor. I find their sentences are loaded with ambiguity and that quite a few of the definitions and explainations are self-referencing, obscure or dubious. Chapter 4 uses sample code that has "ho", "hee" "haha" and "yuk". I found this very, very offputting given that I was struggling with the book anyway. Many of the examples are contrived and this makes them difficult to understand. In general I find that there is nothing substantial here - the material too piecemeal and that is also true of the exercises. Someone told me that if you want to get a good book get a short one. I think that this rule/axiom holds up well. I still have a sense of humour though, although I don't find a program that goes..... yuk, harr, hee hee the remotest bit funny. BTW to help me get through this I am also using: Java How to Program, Deitel and Deitel Java in a Nutshell Java 1.1 Interactive Course, Beer JNut is good
Rating:
Summary: TWO THUMBS UP
Review: I was new to Java when I started reading this book; but i had some good procedural background;So I found this book to be an excellent resource of info. It covers ropics starting from selection and iteration structures, arrays, vectors, etc, to recursion and inheritance. Very comprehensive. My only complain is that I skipped some exercises. Many of them require you to modify tedious codes developed in privious chapters; so if you do not go chapter by chapter, some exercises don't make sense. Also I wish recursion was covered in more detail with more examples,cause i find it rather difficult and wish more was devoted to it.And if the answers to exercises were available it would be nice too. But then, you know when you get it right when you actually compile it , so don't worry about it too much. So, overall , a great welcome for newcommers to Java.Highly recommend.
Rating:
Summary: Pretty cover, pretty graphics, pretty opinionated
Review: I was told to use this book for the introductory Java class I teach at a community college. I liked the idea of teaching objects. The book had a pretty cover, and the graphics are excellent. I read through the introductory matter and was less than pleased. By the time I got to Chapter 2, I knew there was a problem. I have been coding in Java since it was Oak. "Cascading" and "Composition" introduced in Chapter 2? The book using AWT instead of Swing/JFC, there were no usable student questions or exercises, and 70% of the appendix on Java Environments was devoted to the Macintosh!! The text introduces the Vector class as a object oriented programming structure, and then basically tells the reader that arrays are better and negates all the benefits of introducing Java's collection classes. The format forces me to rate 1 star; the star belongs solely to the graphics designers.
Rating: 
Summary: Teaching CS1
Review: I've read this book with the eye of a CS1 teacher. It looks fine. Of course the point is whether or not you think students should be introduced to OO without touching imperative programming
Rating:
Summary: It's simple enough for beginners.
Review: If you don't know anything about programming and just want to jump into Java, this is the book. The examples and instructions on the book is very helpful to beginners. However, the book gets more and more into principles instead of explanatations. You may need to read several times to understand entirely the concepts.
Rating:
Summary: Perhaps this Better Suits the Intermediate Programmer
Review: Much like the "introductory" computer science course I took in Spring 1999, the meaning of the word "introductory" seems to be unclear. We begin the book with a very comforting foray into object-oriented programming with the authors telling the students to keep up with the readings and examples in order to be well on their way to solid programmers. And, these words are kept in the initial chapters as real-life examples meet their computer program counterparts. The examples are worked nicely and are somewhat easy to follow. Once we hit Chapter 3, though, there is a whiplash transition in terms of the material covered. Before the student knows it, he or she is coding their own Java class with instance variables, interfaces, subclasses, reference variables, boolean expressions, arrays, vectors, enumerations, iteration, lists, searching, sorting, stacks, queues, exceptions, overloading, overriding and not to mention recursion. And, this is all before the half-way mark. If the authors wish to promote a solid introductory book to the Java language, the first thing is to eliminate recursion. This is not introductory material. Even though the authors try to simplify the topic by constantly comparing example code to a dishwashing chore after a meal, recursion is as difficult as it sounds. Also, searching, sorting, stacks, and queues best fit a book on data structures. Overall, though, I must commend the authors on the use of English when writing this book. I have read too many books where the psuedo-code makes less sense than the actual code itself. Thankfully, this is not one of them. But, if the book were trimmed down to just the basics, then it would truly fit its title and serve as an excellent welcoming to the expansive library of the Java programming language. Rating: B-
Rating:
Summary: Perhaps this Better Suits the Intermediate Programmer
Review: Much like the "introductory" computer science course I took in Spring 1999, the meaning of the word "introductory" seems to be unclear. We begin the book with a very comforting foray into object-oriented programming with the authors telling the students to keep up with the readings and examples in order to be well on their way to solid programmers. And, these words are kept in the initial chapters as real-life examples meet their computer program counterparts. The examples are worked nicely and are somewhat easy to follow. Once we hit Chapter 3, though, there is a whiplash transition in terms of the material covered. Before the student knows it, he or she is coding their own Java class with instance variables, interfaces, subclasses, reference variables, boolean expressions, arrays, vectors, enumerations, iteration, lists, searching, sorting, stacks, queues, exceptions, overloading, overriding and not to mention recursion. And, this is all before the half-way mark. If the authors wish to promote a solid introductory book to the Java language, the first thing is to eliminate recursion. This is not introductory material. Even though the authors try to simplify the topic by constantly comparing example code to a dishwashing chore after a meal, recursion is as difficult as it sounds. Also, searching, sorting, stacks, and queues best fit a book on data structures. Overall, though, I must commend the authors on the use of English when writing this book. I have read too many books where the psuedo-code makes less sense than the actual code itself. Thankfully, this is not one of them. But, if the book were trimmed down to just the basics, then it would truly fit its title and serve as an excellent welcoming to the expansive library of the Java programming language. Rating: B-
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