Rating: 
Summary: Good for real Beginners
Review: Are you new to OOPs? this is the book for you. Are you an advanced user looking to sharpen your code design skills? Look for something else. This book is "too wordy" (as someone else said above). Though it helps in driving the point home, it gets boring after a while. It is good if you want to learn all OOP jargon and some basic concepts.In 3 words...I like it but I don't think it is good enough to be priced at anything over $15.
Rating: 
Summary: Finally I have arrived!
Review: Funny, intuitive and certainly clear! I went from being confused about Java to having a clear as day understanding of the language. Simply put this book teaches java using the english language, using methaphors we all know and understand, all while keeping a lighter side to things. I've bought about 3 or 4 books on java before thinking they were good and I could use them, but as I delved into the "teaching" I later found that the more complicated the chapter got the more confused I got. I have also finally found a book which does not isolate me from the java classes by building their own intermediary classes which handle the final code. Here, you deal with the code itself, not some bundled java classes which you are required to import in order to compile the example. Mitchell Waite did it again!
Rating: 
Summary: Wordy and Boring!
Review: I agree with one of the reviewers who wrote that the book is wordy and it does not worth over [money]. Only one-third of the book is educational, the rest is junk. The author wants to be funny and all that does is to make me irritated at all the jokes and the pizza and the elephant stories. If I want to learn how to do something, I'll look to the instructions in a manual, not some "comic book want-to-be". I would not recommend this book to anyone.
Rating:
Summary: Wordy and Boring!
Review: I agree with one of the reviewers who wrote that the book is wordy and it does not worth over [money]. Only one-third of the book is educational, the rest is junk. The author wants to be funny and all that does is to make me irritated at all the jokes and the pizza and the elephant stories. If I want to learn how to do something, I'll look to the instructions in a manual, not some "comic book want-to-be". I would not recommend this book to anyone.
Rating: 
Summary: explains concepts well
Review: I have just finished a semester of Java in college but I wanted a book to help clarify the concepts I've learned for review over the summer and so that what I learned would sink in further. I also wanted to learn TRUE Java code (1.1 as opposed to Microsoft's VJ++). I've only read the first few chapters and yet I found this book to be helpful so far. This is the first programming language I have learned and so there were things I learned that were still fuzzy and this book is, chapter by chapter, step by step, clarifying those concepts. Thanks.
Rating:
Summary: explains concepts well
Review: I have just finished a semester of Java in college but I wanted a book to help clarify the concepts I've learned for review over the summer and so that what I learned would sink in further. I also wanted to learn TRUE Java code (1.1 as opposed to Microsoft's VJ++). I've only read the first few chapters and yet I found this book to be helpful so far. This is the first programming language I have learned and so there were things I learned that were still fuzzy and this book is, chapter by chapter, step by step, clarifying those concepts. Thanks.
Rating:
Summary: The BEST Book to Start JAVA
Review: I realized that readers form their personal opinion about a book based on how well it met their expectation. That is quite unfair to the book itself because it may never start out to meet everybody's needs. OOP in Java certainly did not set out to do that. It claims to be a book for those without any prior programming experience and teaches OOP from the ground up. If we solely rate this book based on what it promises, then it not only lives up to it, but far surpasses its claims. It teaches you Java programming not by dumping a lot of facts, figures and explanation but in using generous amount of examples. Before you see another keyword or concept, you would have already mastered the necessary ones to get you ahead. Unlike the other programming books, this goes down to your level (occasionally, it goes too low). But the BEST is that it follows the maxim that programmers are first human and second programmers. Thus teaching you programming not in a vacuum, but relating the whole learning experience to a simulated business company wishing to set up a store. Therefore, you'll not only understand how a concept is, but WHY it is being used in this manner. The only short-coming of this book is that it contains many "real-world" situation that you need to read through before being introduced to the programming, something which I find a little irritating. But if you are new to programming and want to get stated with Java. THIS IS THE BOOK FOR YOU.
Rating:
Summary: BUY THIS BOOK; TRASH ALL OTHERS.
Review: Let's set the stage: I have read "Java in 21 Days". Results: shouldn't have spent 21 minutes. And: "Java and Object-Orientation, (John Hunt); Results, It's nothing but Jargon, "another worthless Academic. It reminds me of the time that Ben Barber (The Whalt Whitman Chair at Rutgers University in New Jersey) said to me on day after class that he was too busy to talk to me because he had a call from the (Clinton) White House. Yea, right Ben You Liar. I Have read Eckels Stuff, too, it's Junk. BUT......This book is the book that will allow you to throw those bloated academics in the trash and get to understanding and writting some great Java code. I suggest that you buy any book that has the names Stephen Gilbert and Bill McCarty in the Author'e credits. Actually, I think I will form a foundation that demands that these two authors write for us--future programmers-- the next instalment of "Advanced Java" by Gilbert and McCarty
Rating:
Summary: BUY THIS BOOK; TRASH ALL OTHERS.
Review: Let's set the stage: I have read "Java in 21 Days". Results: shouldn't have spent 21 minutes. And: "Java and Object-Orientation, (John Hunt); Results, It's nothing but Jargon, "another worthless Academic. It reminds me of the time that Ben Barber (The Whalt Whitman Chair at Rutgers University in New Jersey) said to me on day after class that he was too busy to talk to me because he had a call from the (Clinton) White House. Yea, right Ben You Liar. I Have read Eckels Stuff, too, it's Junk. BUT......This book is the book that will allow you to throw those bloated academics in the trash and get to understanding and writting some great Java code. I suggest that you buy any book that has the names Stephen Gilbert and Bill McCarty in the Author'e credits. Actually, I think I will form a foundation that demands that these two authors write for us--future programmers-- the next instalment of "Advanced Java" by Gilbert and McCarty
Rating:
Summary: A good conceptual start
Review: The book is a good conceptual start for Java 1.1. It is also a good book on OOD. However, since no revision of the book is being done, it is losing value. In fact with passage of time, the usefulness of this book (or any other programming language book) is bound to depreciate. The concept of design patterns is not discussed in this book, which simply cannot be avoided in any book dealing with OOD (except such references as 'accessor' or 'mutator'). Reference to a modeling language (preferably, UML) would appreciate the usefulness, which is my personal opinion. I wish a group of person take this book as an ongoing project and do the necessary things that would bring it to 6*!
| 
