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Rating: 
Summary: Excellent coverage of the most crucial Visual J++ 6 Topics
Review: I am a student with 5 years of C++ experience and have decided to teach myself Java. Coming from a Visual C++ background, I naturally chose Visual J++ as my development platform. This book has got me up and programming in Visual J++ 6 in a very short amount of time, and I am continuing to write more advanced programs as I skim through the latter chapters. I would recommend this book to any Java programmer who uses Visual J++ as it covers all of the most critical topics. Finally, a book that doesn't waste several chapters on useless topics just because other books did.
Rating: 
Summary: Good book for a useless language
Review: I bought this book to learn Visual J++ 6.0 and this book did exactly that.The problem is, Microsoft is no longer going to develop Visual J++ anymore, thereby making the entire language, this book, and the time I spent on it, WORTHLESS. Since SUN has the standard for Java and Microsoft didn't like that, they are doing the unthinkable and deciding that there is no future in Java, so they are abandoning J++. IBM made an eerily similar mistake back in the 80's. If you are working on a project using J++ and have any control over it, change to Java or anything except J++. If you have no control over this, reconsider your career path.
Rating: 
Summary: Poorly laid out, so information suffers
Review: I had to use this book in a class on J++. I was not impressed. The book has very wide margins, which it uses almost exclusively for comments on the text. Almost half of the page is unused for this reason. When code is printed, the lines must wrap onto two or three lines because of this layout. The comments are included after the code, making it very difficult for new users to figure out what is code and what is not. Each individual section of code is numbered, even though several sections may wind up being in the same program. Many of the students in my class end up replacing one line of code which had been labeled 1 in a previous example with the code labeled 1 in a subsequent example. The book uses terms without defining them or defining them 100 pages later. While it is acceptable to describe something briefly and refer to the place where it is described in depth, the book's method leaves the user constantly turning to the index to try to understand what is going on. There is never any explanation of how a program works. The user is never shown how variables pass or call information between subroutines, classes, etc. The book refers to HTML as Hypertext Marked Language. While this is common in the UK, the W3C, which wrote the standard, defines it as Hypertext Markup Language. Almost all of the examples used to demonstrate different constructs like switches and while statements use sports metaphors. For those people who are not interested in sports, this leaves you trying to decode both the language of the example and the code in the example. I would not recommend this book unless you have VERY limited options.
Rating:
Summary: Poorly laid out, so information suffers
Review: I had to use this book in a class on J++. I was not impressed. The book has very wide margins, which it uses almost exclusively for comments on the text. Almost half of the page is unused for this reason. When code is printed, the lines must wrap onto two or three lines because of this layout. The comments are included after the code, making it very difficult for new users to figure out what is code and what is not. Each individual section of code is numbered, even though several sections may wind up being in the same program. Many of the students in my class end up replacing one line of code which had been labeled 1 in a previous example with the code labeled 1 in a subsequent example. The book uses terms without defining them or defining them 100 pages later. While it is acceptable to describe something briefly and refer to the place where it is described in depth, the book's method leaves the user constantly turning to the index to try to understand what is going on. There is never any explanation of how a program works. The user is never shown how variables pass or call information between subroutines, classes, etc. The book refers to HTML as Hypertext Marked Language. While this is common in the UK, the W3C, which wrote the standard, defines it as Hypertext Markup Language. Almost all of the examples used to demonstrate different constructs like switches and while statements use sports metaphors. For those people who are not interested in sports, this leaves you trying to decode both the language of the example and the code in the example. I would not recommend this book unless you have VERY limited options.
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding Text for entry level Visual J++ Programmer!
Review: The book was obviously written very quickly to get to the market. I found it useful when this was the only book in the store.
Rating:
Summary: Close but no cigar...
Review: Upon quick review of the features documented in this book, I found it lacking in one very large area. In many of the chapters of the book it focused on using java.lang classes instead of the superior WFC related classes. For example, the I/O chapter focuses on using java.io instead of wfc.io which is more appropriate. It became clear that this book was a little premature and did not utilize the most important aspect of Visual J++ 6.0...WFC itself.
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