Rating: 
Summary: Worst Tehnical Book I've Seen
Review: Title says it all. The number of factual errors, typographical errors, incomplete statements, and misleading statements are amazing. Consider on page 267 where it states "If 0 is negative, or 1 is negative..." Far more dangerous than this obvious error are the ones that you don't recognize until you read the correct information elsewhere. Stay away from this book!
Rating:
Summary: Worst Tehnical Book I've Seen
Review: Title says it all. The number of factual errors, typographical errors, incomplete statements, and misleading statements are amazing. Consider on page 267 where it states "If 0 is negative, or 1 is negative..." Far more dangerous than this obvious error are the ones that you don't recognize until you read the correct information elsewhere. Stay away from this book!
Rating: 
Summary: Not a good choice
Review: Unfortunately in the world of computer books, there are are (of course) some that are less than mediocre. You know, the sort of books where the authors follow the "take the money and run" school of writing. In my opinion this is one. At first sight this book appears useful to novice programmers, e.g. it includes sections on development techniques, testing and debugging. Looks good from a distance. Then you get into it. For a novice the following is quite reasonable (from chapter 3): "Braces {} are grouping symbols in Java. They mark the beginning and end of a program section. A Java program has an equal number of left and right braces." But turn back to the first chapter and you get stuff like this: "... an int primitive data type must be encoded in 32-bit signed 2's complement representation..." (page 8). And so it goes on throughout the book: unnecessary techno-babble followed a few pages later by a "don't worry if you don't understand this now" apology, followed by mind-dullingly obvious stuff. Plus a good sprinkling of errors. Why do the authors repeatedly call the AppletViewer the "AppleViewer"? The authors correctly assert that the current version of Sun's Java Development Kit is 1.3 (page 16) then proceed to tell you how to install version 1.2. Did ANYONE proof-read this book? Did you know "Input and output operations provide a mechanism for communicating with the computer. We input data into a program to enter information." (page 66). Must remember that. Profound stuff. Experienced programmers will quickly spot all the mistakes in this book, and laugh at its attempts to appeal to novice programmers. Novice programmers may well feel frustrated as they read some bits which are blindingly obvious then try to comprehend other bits which are totally confusing. Despite my criticisms, you might think this book to be good value, given the low cost. It isn't.
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