Rating: 
Summary: This book could have been good..
Review: I am a student at the University of Pretoria who was forced to learn java from "Java Gently". The truth is that I am ashamed that a Professor from our University could actually publish a book like this. The idea is good, but the order in which topics are handled is terrible. Bishop doesn't even explain input until you are months into the course, and then only by using her own text-class which, when I downloaded the first version, did not even compile. (I have heard that later versions do compile.) Personally I disagree with teaching people who know nothing about input and output handling in java to use shortcuts (as in javagently.text)before you teach them the real thing. She also frequently uses concepts in examples which she doesn't explain until three of four chapters later. This makes the debugging of the expamples(!) hell. The case-studies, however, are very helpful. (once you have debugged them.). This could have been a very good book if someone actually proofread it before it was printed. I recommend this book if you are a massochist, who likes figuring things out for yourself.
Rating:
Summary: Not a good book for beginning programmers!
Review: I am so sorry that I chose this book for my CS 1 course! I wish I could start the semester over. At first glance this looked like a reasonable book but by Chapter 3 I knew we were in trouble. Bishop introduces material too quickly, too compactly, and too abstractly. Her examples are huge and cumbersome. My kids are really confused and probably annoyed -- Here's another stupid college textbook that makes us feel like nincompoops! The title is *QUITE* misleading; this is *NOT* a gentle introduction to Java or programming principles. By the way, there's a cultural barrier, too, that North American students will find hard to hurdle. Just check out the "1 man went to mow" song on p. 68 to find out what I mean.
Rating:
Summary: Funny but not serious enough
Review: I had to buy this book for college. Although it's very easy and fun to work with, it doesn't have any object-oriented programming in it. People who just started with programming may like the book, but they will expierience lots of trouble when getting more serious with the object-oriented java-programming
Rating: 
Summary: look somewhere else
Review: I have recently being appointed to teach Java and Object oriented programming to a class in my Institute. Upon poor advice from one of my colleagues, i recommended this book to my class. However i have found it to be a totally frustrating experience using this book as a class text. It is structured very poorly and the author seems to jump all over the place. she introduces complex examples early on the book without any proper explanation of the underlying concepts. She leaves the proper discussion of objects too late in the book and the object and class design methodologies are unclear and poorly explained. an awful book i have now switched to another book by Morelli called Java Java Java which is structured much more cleverly.
Rating:
Summary: This is not a good book
Review: I just wanted to comment on the short cuts the author includes in the book. That comment was right on. Instead of teaching input and output it seems like she just gets lazy and includes a class the overly simplifies it; bad move. I could eat a bowl of alphabet soup and poop out a better written book then this.
Rating: 
Summary: Great for a programming guy
Review: I know programming in other languages too. So when I took up this book, it was with a view to learn something nice really fast. And let me tell you, it was great. I had read a couple of books that tell you how to write applets and have graphics in them. But this book shows how to make your own graphs using APPLICATIONS and makes it seem so easy! I also learnt to write the chat server from this book. Marvellous piece of Java literature.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent- Simple, clear, and concise
Review: I was surprised at all of the negative feedback this book has gotten. I am a professional programmer, and was thrown into Java by a company software need. Among the Java books I had at my disposal, I found Java Gently to be the one that made the concepts the most clear in a concise manner. I found myself constantly referring to Java Gently to grasp different Java concepts, switching then to more advanced books to obtain a more detailed perspective. I believe this is an excellent book for beginner Java programmers that wants to get their feet wet in Java. I am looking forward to a new edition that incorporates the new JFC classes.
Rating:
Summary: Still waiting to be translated
Review: I'm a first year student and this book doesn't help a lot. It gives advice here and there, but I've seen many students walking around with other textbooks as well. The author may be a lecturer at the University of Pretoria, but she doesn't know how to write. As she said herself, The book have been translated into many languages, but is still waiting to be translated into English.
Rating:
Summary: Please, don't even open it
Review: I'm a student at the University of Pretoria as well and I think this book is absolutely a waste. The Author started out well, describing every detail well, untill the fourth chapter. From there on it just looks as if she got tired of explaining her code examples. Most of the code later in the book gets split up and most of the time one doesn't know which code is part of which program. If you want learn java, try another book.
Rating:
Summary: Summary of the Reviews so far
Review: If you take a look at the reviews so far, you will see one common denominator: those who have little programming experience are greatly frustrated with this book. But programmers who need to learn a new language, seem to think that it is quite OK. I would have to place myself in the first category. I read the first couple of chapters as part of a university course, but soon abandoned the book. The learning curve is way too steep for beginners. The progression of themes bears witness of limited pedagogical insight. But I still believe that folks with plenty of programming experience may enjoy this book. I give it two stars, though, primarily because of the inappropriate title. This is NOT a 'gentle' introduction to Java. Maybe the third edition has improved in this respect (published December 2000)?
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