Customer Reviews
A very mixed bag - By: Maxelon, 17 Dec 2006 
I have not programmed for more years than I care to remember & for various reasons wanted to get into Java. I bought this book thinking it would give a stronger theoretical understanding than many of the other books around. I like to understand why I am doing things, but that is not a strenght of this book. It spends a long time explaining very basic stuff (fair enough on an introductory book, & easy to skim over), but then in later sections skims over things with barely a mention as to what is going on.
Bottom lin is this is just another 'cookbook' type of tutorial: Here is an example, repeat it & it will work for you. No real explanations. Sections on Swing very poor indeed. Given that Swing is supposed to support multi-platform it would also be nice if they worked properly on OS-X. Still, figuring out the problems was a good way to learn things.
I can't recommend this book, but I can now programme in Java (more-or-less), so I probably should not slate it too much.
University Student : Must Buy - By: , 06 Jan 2004 
This book is a sound investment for beginners in java. I would recommend it for any java courses. It has step by step guides followed by tutorial questions & practicals. Excellent way to teach yourself. It's cheaper, clear & concise than other expensive java books ive purchased. Students cheer save money on your beer!!!
As a uni student this book is my java bible - By: , 09 Nov 2003 I got this book during my first week at university. I found it so easy to read & get into I just went mad & read pretty much the whole damn thing in a week. As a result my year one tutors are having to ask me what such & such in my program does as my work (alll thanks to this book) is covering things that my course doesnt even cover until half way through semester one of year two!(when hopefuly i'll have more savvy tutors) .Buy this book if you want to learn Java.
Also I know a lot of "beginers" get bogged down in books that are alll code with programs that are little more than "Hello World" being printed to a command prompt. This book will have you drawing basic graphics to windows in no time & with progress you will be importing & animating real graphics. Top stuff 5/5.
Computing Students... this is a MUST!
The Ultimate Java book for beginners! - By: Adam Bunch, 10 Nov 2002 This book is by far the best book for learning Java from scratch I have ever come across. I had very little programming experience before picking up this book but after going through this I now have strong fundamental skills in Java & a good knowledge of more advanced topics. The book assumes absolutely no programming knowledge & explains what could be extremely difficult topics in a simple, friendly way. There is no other book on the market that would give you such a good basic grounding in Java than this. Buy it now!
