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Rating: 
Summary: A good introduction to Java and JBuilder
Review: I found this book to very useful to quickly learn Java. I was in a bind, and needed to learn quickly and away from the computer. The throrough steps and provided screenshots made learning Java without the computer possible. I read the first 60% of the book in three days, got back to the computer, and was producing basic applets in no time. I don't think, however, that it's appropriate to call this book a bible as a "Bible" book to me covers many general subjects, whereas this is more of a "Learn Java in XX days" type of book.
Rating: 
Summary: Will get you started with JBUILDER
Review: This book will not help you learn Java, AWT or the JFC. There are better books on all these topics. What this book will help you do is use the JBUILDER IDE. Unfortunately, the Borland tutorials that come with the JBUILDER product provide more confusion than light. This book comes to the rescue teaching you how to use the IDE to do things. Other than that, it is not useful as a reference or a Java learning tool. However, it will get you started with the IDE and for that I give it 5 stars.
Rating:
Summary: Will get you started with JBUILDER
Review: This book will not help you learn Java, AWT or the JFC. There are better books on all these topics. What this book will help you do is use the JBUILDER IDE. Unfortunately, the Borland tutorials that come with the JBUILDER product provide more confusion than light. This book comes to the rescue teaching you how to use the IDE to do things. Other than that, it is not useful as a reference or a Java learning tool. However, it will get you started with the IDE and for that I give it 5 stars.
Rating:
Summary: A flawed book that nonetheless manages to shine.
Review: This is a great book for learning how to program in Java using JBuilder...but it does have some problems. First, the good stuff: The book is divided into four parts. The first part covers the basics of object-oriented programming and using the JBuilder 2 environment. Part II covers the Java language in more detail, giving the reader a solid basis in Java programming. Part III covers topics in advanced object oriented thinking and goes into greater depth about the JBuilder environmnet. Part IV leads the reader through building two medium-scale projects: an Othello game and a scheduler. The author does a very good job in parts I, II, and IV, but falls down somewhat in Part III. The advanced object-oriented topics could have used a bit more explanation, for example. I had to go over them a couple of times to really understand the concepts. Additionally, the section on deploying applets is fairly useless (as is the JBuilder help documentation on this subject). I had to find assistance on the web in order to get my applet to successfully run from my web page. But the most glaring problem with the book is the lack of single- and double-quotes in the program listings. Someone at IDG Books didn't do his or her job, failing to catch the fact that the typesetting process had inadvertently replaced both forms of quotes with spaces (albeit only in the program listings). This makes some of the listings _very_ hard to follow, especially for beginning Java programmers. However, once you realize the problem exists, you can start looking for where single- and double-quotes should have been placed, so it's not an insurmountable problem. Without the author's strong skill as a teacher, the book wouldn't be worth the purchase price. As it is, though, it remains worthwhile to put up with the typesetting problems in order to gain the benefit of Eric Armstrong's knowledge and teaching skill. If you're new to Java programming and JBuilder 2, I strongly recommend the purchase of this book.
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