Rating: 
Summary: Not that great
Review: Coming from C/C++ and Perl, I understood the book fine. And as long as the author sticks to the technical aspects of Java, he does alright, I guess. But he makes many inaccurate statements about C and Perl, in my opinion, while making Java out to be the greatest thing since sliced bread. I'm keeping the book, at least for now, as a reference, but I'm learning Java from better books, viz, Eckel's Thinking in Java, and publisher Addison Wesley's The Java Tutorial.
Rating: 
Summary: It is pretty bad
Review: I am a computer Science student at the university of new brunswick and i felt that this book was a complete waste of time. The author would introduce new topics and then jump into rather difficult examples with very little explanations. I would recommend that anybody interested in learning java to not buy this book.
Rating: 
Summary: ONLY FOR PROGRAMMER
Review: I studied no less than four other tutorials, ranging from "okay" (Thinking in Java, Bruce Eckel) to downright bad (Learning Java, O'Reilly). For a while, I was convinced that Java was a sickening, convoluted language with about 850 weird little "rules" that seemed to change for every possible situation. I was never going to get it.Then I gave this book a try, and soon realized that it was not the language that confounded me, but the other authors' explanations of it. Peter van der Linden does an outstanding job of explaining the language with a style that makes his text very easy to read and understand. Things began to click almost immediately, and at more than one point in my discovery of the brilliant design and engineering of the Java platform I caught myself laughing out loud and thinking, "That's *so* cool!" at some particular feature that had just been described in the text. Since reading it, I've written a few useful applications in Java, including a network monitoring tool, and a Java servlet that helps Netcool monitor some of my web servers at work (with the help of "Java Servlet Programming", from O'Reilly). If you've been struggling with learning Java, I strongly recommend giving this book a try. The language really is incredibly well thought out by Sun, you probably just need the right guide to show you around. Hopefully you'll find, as I did, that Peter van der Linden is that guide.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Book, Not for newbies
Review: I think this a great java book. It has been very usefull to me as a reference as I work more and more in java. It is probably best suited to those with some programming experience, and might not be the best to learn java from scratch from. It does cover basic object theory pretty well. As you get more into java and need to know more about the classes available this book becomes a priceless resource. Also parts of it are a fun read.
Rating:
Summary: A Quick Fix
Review: If you want to learn Java in a hurry, go for this book. But if you have some time at your hands, forget it. I say this because of the following 1- It's a small book on a big language which means brief explanations and very few examples. 2- Even with this size, the author has wasted quite a lot of book space to show his sense of humor (which I didn't find very humorous, sorry Peter). 3- The book is not very well organized. 4- The author claims that you don't need to know C++ to learn Java from this book. I find this claim a bit ambitious. Specially when author himself refers to different aspects of C++ to clarify certain concepts. In short, if you want to read some jokes, learn how to make a paper airplane which can carry payload (I'm not kidding), know authors views about how software are and should be named, read some inside information on Sun Systems, enjoy digs at Microsoft and learn Java, buy the book now. But if you just want to learn Java in an organized and professional manner, read Wrox Press' book "Beginning Java 2" by Ivor Horton. You won't be disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: Great reference/Great learning tool
Review: It's not often that you find a book that can both teach you a new language and function as a great reference. This book is it. Aside from the JDK help, this is my only reference and for the most part it has served me well. I started from a C++ background and had no trouble learning from this book. It might be tempting to skim through some of the beginning chapters that seem like something any C++ programmer would know (e.g. Object-Oriented Programming), but I recommend reading them. There are a lot of really good Java tips you don't want to miss, such as how constructors are invoked and how static blocks are loaded in the JVM. Probably the biggest benefit of this book is that it tells you both the how and the why in many cases. Another positive is that the examples are small and to the point. In general there was a good amount of information per page. The book's biggest weakness is the chapter on File I/O. This is common functionality that many Java programmers will use, but the presentation is not as easy to follow as the other chapters. Another drawback is the networking chapter, but there seem to be entire books dedicated to this subject. If you are learning Java from an object oriented background, you will be glad you got this book. It's one of the thinner books on the shelf, believe it or not, but the information is top notch.
Rating:
Summary: very cryptic details
Review: not suited for beginner's should have qiute lucid explations
i dont recommend for new commers to java
Rating: 
Summary: Not bad, but not for newbies
Review: This book is great for those with previous OO experience (or at least a strong knowledge of C programming), but for those who are new to programming, I would recommend trying The Java Tutorial by Campione, et al. Just Java does a good job explaining fundamental concepts accurately, but it might be a bit out there for newbies. I do think that it is a little weak on the topic of Threads - I'd recommend the O'Reilly Threads book instead. Also check out The Elements of Java Style by Vermeulen, et al. Just Java doesn't touch information in that book.
Rating:
Summary: A fun read for a computer book
Review: This book succeeded in getting me started with Java. I'm not a great programmer, so that's saying something. Other reviewers have complained about the difficulty of picking up OOP concepts from this book. I can understand their point of view, but in van der Linden's defense I think it should be pointed out that OOP is fairly hard to get ahold of the first time you're exposed to it, and I'm not sure other books are much easier. I studied math in college, and I found that I didn't learn things from the teacher as much as I did by wrestling with the problems on my own. If you want to understand why the main method in your class has to instantiate an object of the class that contains the aforementioned main method in order to access an object member that isn't static, you're going to have to work through it on your own. It's the sort of understanding that a teacher can't really hand you on a silver platter. It's not really hard, but you do have to know what all the words mean. The experience of wrestling with these kinds of concepts is what makes them sink in. So I would argue that this book is complete, in the sense that it takes you through the OOP concepts you need to learn. But fundamentally you have to confront those concepts by yourself, alone in front of your own computer with your own copy of the JDK. If you try to run through the book without confronting the issues that fly over your head in the early chapters, the rest of the book will be incomprehensible. It's analogous to what happens to you in French class if you don't learn the early grammar and vocabulary. I enjoyed the style of the book. Linden makes you feel like there's a human being on the other side of word processor, with a personality, a sense of humor, and his own style and sensibility. I wish more computer books were like that, so many of them are impersonal and devoid of human content. Spending time with this book is a little more like spending time with a person, which is a good thing in my opinion. Part of Linden's personality is a fairly ideological approach to the computer industry. He's down on Microsoft and an evangelist for Java. I'm not sure that's a bad thing, but the anti-Microsoft stuff might rub some people the wrong way. I think it's a great book overall.
Rating:
Summary: Good Reference With A Bit Of Humor
Review: This book was required for an online Java course I took quite a few years ago. I continue use this book as a reference quite a bit. I also have "Thinking in Java", and I find this book a slightly better reference because it seems "more dense"; fewer pages can be read to start laying down some code! Occasionally I'll run into some of Van Der Linden's jokes, which I find quite funny, and a nice change of pace in this kind of material. Along with the humor, the author doesn't mind "telling it like it is" with respect to the Microsoft's sometimes illustrious actions.
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