Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I have waited to write this review until I had finished the book cover-to-cover in order to give a fair review. I bought this book because of the author Herbert Schildt. I have read several of his books and found them all to be informative, easy to understand and well written. While I was disappointed in some aspects of this book, overall I liked it. I think, however, everyone should know what this book has to offer prior to buying it. It may not suit the needs of some potential buyers.
This book is broken up into four sections: The Java Language, The Java Library, Software Development Using Java, and Applying Java.
The first section was the best and most detailed section of the book. It goes from page 4 to page 340 and is an excellent tutorial for learning the Java language. It doesn't talk about the AWT, applets, or any graphical programming for that matter, but gives the reader a firm foundation with which to move into those more interesting Java programming areas. This section alone was worth the price of the book. (while I agree with another reviewer that Bruce Eckel's Thinking in Java was a great book, I like this one better because it doesn't keep referring back to C/C++ all the time).
From the start of the second section through the end of the book, this book takes on a different approach. Instead of detailed descriptions as offered in the first section of the book, it begins to be an overview. Many topics are touched upon and many examples are given, but the reader is not given enough information or depth in these chapters to make them very useful.
The bottom line is, this book provides a firm understanding of Java's syntax and object oriented programming. After that it provides brief glimpses of the many kinds of programming you can do with Java.
If you don't know where you want to go with Java, this book is, in my opinion, the best way to sample Java enough to make your decision. If your purpose in wanting this book is to be an applet programmer (or do any graphical programming for that matter), I think you would do better to read the first section of this book (to page 340) and then read the Graphic Java books, volumes I, II and III, which cover the AWT, Swing and 2D API respectively.
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This book is the most complete and up-to-date resource on Java from programming guru, Herb Schildt -- a must-have desk reference for every Java programmer.
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