Java: The Complete Reference, J2SE 5 Edition

Rating:
Summary: A Good Reference Book
Review: I got this book as a prize at a Java User Group meeting. Overall, it's a good reference book to keep. One thing I wish it had covered is the JSPs, since it does cover the Servlets.

Rating:
Summary: If you need one Java book - this is it!
Review: This book gives nice coverage of the Java language with particular focus on the new Collections. This book also has nice coverage of threads and several chapters devoted to user interface related matters - swing, servlets, applets, etc.

What is particularly refreshing with this book is the large number of complete and reasonable examples (which was a major deciding factor for my purchase of this book).

I have used several other Java books - including the O'Reilly series and feel they do not compare in ease of use to this book.

Although the depth in some areas could be greater, (as evidenced by entire Java books devoted to Threads, I/O, etc.) as a language reference this book is unsurpassed. You can usually find enough information in the book to give you a reasonable idea how to use some element of the language. This book is definately a nice supplement to the Java docs.

The author also does a nice job of pointing out important differences between Java 1.1 and Java 1.2.

Rating:
Summary: A Great Reference for Novice & Experienced Programmers Alike
Review: When I needed to learn the Java programming language very quickly for work, I read many reviews and narrowed down my search to handful of few books. I looked at copies of my final possible choices in a local bookstore and finally purchased Herbert Schildt's "Java 2: A Beginner's Guide, Second Edition" and have absolutely no regrets. Along with this book, I realized that I would also need a more comprehensive reference book detailing the multitude of Java classes designed for many purposes. To this end, I chose Herbert Schildt's "Java 2: The Complete Reference, Fifth Edition" not only for its extensive library, but also because of Herbert Schildt's wonderful writing that is easy to read and understand quickly.

Herbert Schildt subdivided "Java 2: The Complete Reference, Fifth Edition" into four parts: tutorial, library, software development and applications. Part I (the first 346 pages) is a Java tutorial, organized similarly to Herbert Schildt's other book that I purchased, "Java 2: A Beginner's Guide, Second Edition". However, the tutorial in this book is more condensed than in the guide, which has over 500 pages. Some readers may find the condensed approach in this book sufficient to learn the language, but if you want more comprehensive tutorial explanations, the guide is good companion.

Part II (the next 539 pages) is an extensive library detailing most of Java's built-in classes dealing with everything from string handling, collections, utility classes, console I/O, file I/O, networking, applets, event handling (mouse movements, button use, and other interactive GUI objects), the AWT (Abstract Window Toolkit), images and other I/O types including Regular Expressions. Part III (the next 128 pages) provides some information about Java Beans, Swing, Servlets and a helpful guide for migrating from C++ to Java. Part IV (the next 123 pages) shows Java in action with four example applications.

Overall, I rate Herbert Schildt's "Java 2: The Complete Reference, Fifth Edition" with 5 out of 5 stars. It has become a constant companion as I learn and work with Java.