M. Gordon said
This book is a good, by example book for you to learn Java and understand how and why it includes certain features/functions in the language. If you are looking for a reference book, this one is a bit hard to navigate to find detailed information about class interfaces. Another thing it is lacking is in-depth design patterns. If you are looking for detailed information on writing Swing interfaces, look elsewhere as well.

However, all in all, this book will successfully guide you through the Java language. You should be able to write multi-threaded programs that are networked and can successfully use file IO by the end of the book. It is especially useful if you have written software in other languages. If you are a beginner at writing software, you should probably buy a beginner's book before this.

D. Seholm said
As a C/C++ programmer switching to Java I found this book very helpful as a beginning book. It was pointed out that the author takes the time to go over why certain things are different between the two languages... It should be noted that if they were not pointed out would have landed me in quite a baffeling bit of trouble, as I am sure is the case with many others.
It is agreed that the title is a bit much, but it is at the fault of Osborne not the author, it is the name of the series of books, and none of them are complete, but for that matter there is not a computer science book ever printed that completely covers a single subject... and I dare say there never will be either. With that said, a better title would be The Complete Beginners Reference, and for that purpose it is an excellent book, and that is why it got five stars... that was after all the books very obvious intention.
Someone mentioned that using an API without knowing how it was built and absolutely works is bad practice... I have two comments on that actually, the first being is that if you bring that up at a meeting at work some day you will get alot of rolling eyes if you are lucky, but more than likely a good chewing out, or firing from the boss... you dont have time to understand ever facet of every single function, most of the time you are using bits and pieces of a program that multiple other people wrote and throwing it all into a program inside of a few months that would have taken you years to have wrote alone. Second, you have to learn to walk before you can run, and APIs are excellent ways to get into some more advanced stuff with out completely knowing what you are doing yet... humans do learn by trial and error after all, think about the first time one of your parents told you not to touch something hot.
Lastly a leading authority does not mean he is the master of those languages... the people you mentioned are known as the best programmers of that language, there is alot more to programming than being extrememly good at manipulating the language... for instance you may have an extremely well founded knowledge of how the compiler handels your code... as does schilt... you may not be able to come up with the code, but you can look at it and tell exactly what it is going to do, we have several people at work that do that, they are horrable programmers, but they are extremely good at finding logic errors. Beginners need a good elementary base with this, and that is why they get someone who is good at it to write the book.

So Kudos to Herbert Schildt on an excellent beginners book... and reference to those of us having a bad day.

S. Stanicki said
I thought this book would help me learn Java when I first bought it, but I think the examples are skimpy. A more complete reference and tutorial is Cay Horstman's and Gary Cornell's 7 ed. of Core Java 2: Volumes 1 and 2. These 2 volumes have great examples, and go more in-depth into Java. Skip Schildt's book, and buy the Core Java Volumes even if you need just a reference. You will be happier, and learn more.

R. Bajwala said
Very good book if you are a beginner. It gives you the basics for everything you need. I havent given it 5 stars because it lacks some of the advanced stuff, you end up referring to some other books for that.
Certainly recommended if you are planning to use this as a reference too.

Vinay Solanki said
This book as the name suggest gives you complete overview for learning and understanding Java. It clearly points out the differences between Java 1.4 and Java 1.5 (J2SE 5.0). It highlights the important points and gives introduction to Swings, Servlets and a good financial application using java.

Good for any beginner !!