webmeister said
Ivor Horton's book is very good at explaining some of the certain features of Java and providing examples of how to implement something you might want to do, such as writing to a file. Even though he starts out with variables, loops, and conditions and such, he moves very quickly and doesn't give a whole lot of explanation, so you had better be either intelligent enough to understand as you read or already have had a strong foundation in important Java concepts. Learn the OO basics like Polymorphism, inheritance, extension, objects, etc...and then pick up this book to learn the Java features. Things will make a lot more sense.
M. Fries said
Great beginning book for anyone who wants to learn Java. Teaches the syntax of Java, along with the basics to programming. Book includes program examples with sections explaining how the programs work. Excellent source for beginning, as well as advanced, programmers.
S. Papantoniou said
As the title says: "Beginning...", so the experts that wrote a review shouldnt be angry. The author explains every term he uses [excellent teaching practice!], does not assume that you should "of course" "know" this... Naturally, if you are an experieneced progammer this book may be too long, but alas: read faster in this case.
Four stars because of (some) mistakes. Otherwise 5*.
JBond said
This is a great book, and the longest that I have ever read. Ivor's teaching approach, although frustrating and daunting, effectively teaches the language concepts you need to begin programming. You will find yourself adding code to an example and redoing it later and redoing it later... each time learning a tiny bit about design and some about the Java language. The big example (a drawing program called Sketcher) is developed over several chapters and is used to demonstrate all sorts of language features including a good intro into Swing. Even though I feel that this is a fairly solid book that I would recommend, I am only giving it 1 star to bias my vote and communicate a message to Wrox: Hire at least one book editor that has some quality standards. The book is fraught with mistakes (most don't appear in the Errata as of 2/16/06).
John Pappas said
The book is rife of unsound programming practices. On the cover, 'Ivan' tells you how good his style is and how he'll teach you a marketable skill - what he teaches you is how to write second rate scratch.
My main gripe is the example code... I personally don't think it's much to expect for all the code in a programming book to be compilable nevermind correct.
This is really a disgrace.
Do yourself a favor and buy an Oreilly book or just do the turorial on java.sun.com.
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