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Head First Java 327

Posted by timothy from the dive-in dept.
honestpuck writes "Earlier this year I decided to learn Java. I'd spent some time using JavaScript without really getting my hands too dirty but I'd pushed it way to far and realized I needed a bigger hammer. Grabbing a copy of Learning Java, 2nd Edition from O'Reilly I started learning. First problem, I have to admit I've stayed away from object-oriented programming; after all, I've been writing software for nigh on twenty years without it - why make life hard? Sure, I understood the concepts and I'd done a little but never in a language so strongly committed to OO as Java." Read on for honestpuck's review of Head First Java, which he compares in style and content to Learning Java.
Head First Java
author Bert Bates, Kathy sierra
pages 650
publisher O'Reilly
rating 8
reviewer Tony Williams
ISBN 0596004656
summary Good, offbeat Java tutorial with new approach to learning computer topics

The Good

Of course, you can't learn Java without a good understanding of object-oriented languages. I made fairly heavy going with 'Learning Java' until I decided to dive in head first. Head First Java, that is -- a new book from O'Reilly that has a totally different attitude to teaching than I've seen before in computer books. It also looks like this might be the start of a series from O'Reilly, the website an introduction seem to assume that there will be more 'Head First' titles and I hope so. The style is humorous, full of graphics, cartoons, puzzles, quizzes and crosswords. It reminds me of the textbooks that used to try and teach me geometry and algebra in high school or my daughter's elementary books on Roman and Greek history I purchased for her at the British Museum. The style didn't work to teach me much algebra and geometry, but I wasn't anywhere near as motivated. This time, it worked. In a couple of weeks I worked through the book and finally have Java skills where I can branch off and start coding the projects I had in mind (though something more advanced will be required soon.)

In the introduction the authors examine learning and explain why they designed the book as they did. To quote from one section: "Some of the Head First learning principles. Make it visual. Put the words within or near the graphics. Use a conversational and personalized style. Get the learner to think more deeply. Get -- and keep -- the reader's attention. Touch their emotions." They argue that our brain is tuned to novelty, and that their style provides the novelty to keep your brain turned on. They also provide ten tips for good learning. That's one thing that seems to set this book apart from most other computer books, they say they think of their reader as a learner and indeed that's the way you are treated by the book. You can start to get a feel for their ideas by visiting headfirst.oreilly.com, a site devoted to the series. You can also grab a couple of example chapters from the books web page, which also has the usual marketing info, table of contents and errata.

The Bad

When compared to Learning Java the coverage is not as good. Head First really only covers the basics, up to and including creating a GUI with SWING and then touches a number of others; Learning Java goes on to explore, with a fair depth, network programming, web programming, servlets, applets, Java Beans, XML and other topics that are only touched on briefly in Head First. If the style of learning does not suit you then this will be an incredibly irritating and useless book, I'd give it a try first, though. If it isn't for you then the style of Learning Java might be better.

Conclusion

When you get down to it, though, the only way to really decide on the worth of a tutorial is to decide how well it teaches. Head First Java excels at teaching. OK, I thought it was silly, I had a hard time making myself do the exercises, fill out the crosswords and solve the puzzles. Then I realized that I was thoroughly learning the topics as I went through the book. Learning Java was doing the same job, but the dry traditional method wasn't doing as well. Both books are well written, designed and constructed -- the style of Headfirst Java just made learning, well, easier.

It would seem to me that the 'Head First' approach is going to work wonderfully for the more 'beginner' topics, books for introducing you to a new style of programming, a new language or a radically different operating system or application. So if you're looking for a book to introduce you to Java then I can recommend Head First Java. Now if I could only find a book as good to introduce me to Common Lisp.

You can purchase Head First Java from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
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Head First Java

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  • EWD 696 (Score:3, Insightful)

    by pheared ( 446683 ) <kevin.pheared@net> on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @12:35PM (#6453487) Homepage
    In the introduction the authors examine learning and explain why they designed the book as they did. To quote from one section: "Some of the Head First learning principles. Make it visual. Put the words within or near the graphics.

    "The habit of using pictorial aids, like any habit, is very difficult to get rid of. If, however, we take any responsibility for the effectiveness of our thinking habits, we should try to get rid of the habit as quickly as possibile, for it is a bad habit, confusing and misleading up to the point of being paralysing."

    • Re:EWD 696 (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      What is that a quote from? As a technical trainer we are taught that there are different types of learners and one of those types is visual. They learn best by seeing examples and graphics. That quote sounds like elitist bullshit that makes it seem like all learning should be done with dry imageless textbooks.

    • Tufte (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Tripp Lilley ( 8787 )
      I beg to differ, and I'm not the only one:

      Assessments of change, dynamics, and cause and effect are at the heart of thinking and explanation. To understand is to know what cause provokes what effect, by what means, at what rate. How then is such knowledge to be represented?

      This book describes design strategies--the proper arrangement in space and time of images, words, and numbers--for presenting information about motion, process, mechanism, cause and effect. These strategies are found again and aga

    • Good try - but Dijkstra wasn't talking about education, he was talking about abstraction. Remember his example? - where he mentions drawing an "abstract triangle", and how as soon as you have drawn a specific triangle, then you have made concrete decisions: "does it have an obtuse angle" etc. Dijkstra's point is that when you represent a general concept using a specific example, you get blinded to the possibilities offered by alternative examples. And he's right - to a certain degree.

      You see, the counter

    • Re:EWD 696 (Score:5, Informative)

      by TheWanderingHermit ( 513872 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @06:07PM (#6456633)
      "The habit of using pictorial aids, like any habit, is very difficult to get rid of. If, however, we take any responsibility for the effectiveness of our thinking habits, we should try to get rid of the habit as quickly as possibile, for it is a bad habit, confusing and misleading up to the point of being paralysing."

      Anyone who would say that obviously has no knowledge of how people learn and how different people learn with different styles.

      As someone who spent 10 years with learning disabled and emotionally disturbed students, I can say one of the most effective teaching aids for ANYONE is finding out how they learn and presenting material in the style in which they absorb it the best. Since I worked with those who had the most difficulty learning, I had to learn as much as possible about how we ALL -- disabled, "normal", or gifted learn.

      In a nutshell, anyone who can make a statement like the one above is ignorant. It has the sound of someone who is so busy showing off how intelligent he or she is that he has yet to realize how little he knows about people.

      Perhaps it was written by someone who does well with the style of learning he describes because he spends all his time in books and on the web and has not yet learned how to deal with the real world yet.
    • Or the girl in the bathtub, or, well, about 98% of what's in a Head First book. And this was deliberate. I'm the co-perpetrator, and creator of the Head First series.

      Personally, and as smart as he is...Dijkstra is just not someone I would have ever wanted to date, or even sit next to at a dinner party.

      And wasn't he also the author of something to the effect of, "Anthropomorphizing is the sign of an immature mind?"

      Well, we blew that one Big Time. I think half the book is anthropomorphized *things* -- obj

  • I await a review of... (Score:5, Funny)

    by PHAEDRU5 ( 213667 ) <`moc.liamg' `ta' `deercsatsni'> on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @12:36PM (#6453497) Homepage
    ..."Mr Bunny's First Cup o' Java"

  • Misconception (Score:2, Informative)

    by shaldannon ( 752 )
    It appears our reviewer has fallen under a common misconception.

    Java != JavaScript

    The two are not even related. Yes, you can use them together, but the only thing they have in common are the four letters "J-a-v-a". It's bad enough when normal people fall under this misconception. We don't need supposedly technically savvy people succumbing to the same thing.

    JavaScript was developed by Netscape as a dynamic browser language, and "extended" by Microsoft. The W3C "standardized" it, and then both

    • Re:Misconception (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @12:42PM (#6453559)
      It is almost like somebody saying - I wanted to study cartography because I already know something about cars.
      • It is almost like somebody saying - I wanted to study cartography because I already know something about cars.

        Bloody hell. That's the most perfect metaphor I've ever heard for it. Brilliant!

    • Re:Misconception (Score:5, Informative)

      by M-2 ( 41459 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @12:42PM (#6453566) Homepage
      The current W3C approved release of it is, I believe, currently referred to as ECMAScript, in an attempt to separate the two. (The ECMA is a European governing body on standards, and I do not recall what it stands for at this time).

      I wouldn't mind seeing them separated like that - it would make more sense and minimize confusion, as well as the interleaving of books in bookstores. "Java... Javascript... hell, they must be the same thing!"
      • I believe you are correct on the name, and I think it's an excellent idea. Unfortunately, the confusion has been going on so long that I think we're stuck with it :(

    • Re:Misconception (Score:2, Informative)

      by Ranx ( 28829 )

      The W3C "standardized" it, and then both Netscape and Microsoft went about with their own proprietary versions.

      The W3C has not much to do with JavaScript.

      ECMA [ecma-international.org] is the organization who made JavaScript into an independent standard (ECMAScript).

    • There could be a sort of natural progression there, though.

      Maybe our reviewer was building, say, a Javascript-based navigation system for a website and decided to do it in Java to avoid cross-browser issues.

      Oh, and the W3C never standardized JavaScript. ECMA [ecma-international.org] did with ECMA-262 [ecma-international.org].

    • Re:Misconception (Score:5, Insightful)

      by sokeeffe ( 210737 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @01:04PM (#6453788) Homepage
      No, he has not fallen under any misconception.

      His problem was that he found that he could not achieve what he wanted using a javascript (an arguably limited web-baed scripting language) and decided to move to another language with more powerful features.

    • Re:Misconception (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Waffle Iron ( 339739 )
      Another misconception he seems to have is that JavaScript isn't object oriented. It actually uses an interesting object system that uses "prototypes" rather than classes. This system, while somewhat strange, is actually more flexible than a lot of class-based systems. (IIRC, one of the more extreme examples of a prototype-based language is "self" [sun.com]. It's worth checking out if just to help you understand by counterexample exactly what's going on when you use classes in a normal OO langague.)
    • They're not completely separate. I remember seeing Java objects being instanciated in JavaScript embedded in pages destined for Netscape. The stuff never worked in IE.

      • Re:Misconception (Score:4, Funny)

        by HenryFlower ( 27286 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @01:43PM (#6454181)
        They're not completely separate. I remember seeing Java objects being instanciated in JavaScript embedded in pages destined for Netscape.


        Right, and by that logic Python is related to Java 'cause you can instantiate Java objects in Jython. And C is nearly the same as lotsa languages, 'cause lotsa languages have C extensions which allow you to instantiate C objects in the language. Javascript and Java have only the notion of being roughly C-looking languages which came out at roughly the same time, and were both championed by Netscape.

        • Re:Misconception (Score:3, Funny)

          by Malc ( 1751 )
          Instead of being a prick, you could have just reminded me that what I'm remembering is actually a feature of LiveConnect.
    • I think calling their scripting language JavaScript was the first of Netscape's mistakes in accomodating Sun. The biggest mistake, of course, was wasting time rewriting Navigator in Java instead of concentrating on competing with IE.

      It reminds me of the old Borland that got the C++ religion and thought they had to write all their Windows apps in C++. They did some nice work, but it delayed their entry into Windows and was a significant step toward the dominance of MS Office.

  • Don't know about Head First Java, but ... (Score:3, Informative)

    by UTaimSRC ( 689392 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @12:38PM (#6453514)
    The Java Cookbook is the way to go for beginners.

    http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/javacook/
  • Hopefully O'Reilly will continue in this vein of beginner books - the Head First series - as an educational and fun way of jump-starting the reader into the subject matter.

    Once the reader has absorbed the introductory material in the Head First book, he/she is ready and more able to delve deeper into the subject with a 'heavier' book -- in this case, Learning Java.

  • Try Thinking in Java 3rd Edition (Score:4, Informative)

    by nih ( 411096 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @12:46PM (#6453616)
    best book on java imo, and its free to try out
    http://mindview.net/Books/DownloadSites

    • Re:Stay away from it..... (Score:4, Informative)

      by botzi ( 673768 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @01:16PM (#6453892)
      This is far, far, too far away from being the best book on Java.

      I'll even argue that this is not a good book at all. As always Mr. Eckel is going on and on with a 2-3 pages of reflections and a small piece of programming practices(everyone who've tried to read the C++ thinking, know for what I'me talking about), so my point is :

      1) The book will be confusing for a beginner programmer.

      2) It'll be useless for the most part to a person with some general programming culture.

      Anyway, the best book to start with java is "On to Java", I don't even remember the authors but it's everything: Short, explicit and well structured. A problem may be that it should be a bit outdated.......

      Of course, all one really need to start programming in Java is here [sun.com]
    • I too am a fan of Eckel's books. They emphasize the big picture that leads you to thinking in the language's "paradigm" while still fully covering the details.

      It's true that Eckel's books are less than ideal as reference texts -- he's too conversational. But in introducing not only 1) the semantics of a language and 2) its syntax, his strength best lies in 3) teaching the way the language expresses programming design concepts -- helping the reader to appreciate that language's fundamental design pattern

  • OOP for the procedural programmer (Score:4, Informative)

    by djrisk ( 689742 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @12:55PM (#6453697)
    I too had some problems w/understanding object-oriented programming. I was strong w/procedural languages, and your standard top-down programming style, but I struggled grasping the concepts of OOP.

    I found "The Object-Oriented Thought Process" [amazon.com] to be a great jumping-off point in helping me familiarize myself with how to think in-terms of OOP.

    The intro to OOP chapters that are in most introductory books are OK, but they just didn't do enough for me.

    • "I too had some problems w/understanding object-oriented programming. I was strong w/procedural languages, and your standard top-down programming style, but I struggled grasping the concepts of OOP. I found "The Object-Oriented Thought Process" [amazon.com] to be a great jumping-off point in helping me familiarize myself with how to think in-terms of OOP."

      If you're going to do Java, OOP is essential IMO.

      I'm working on a project right now at work (in MSAccess VBA, ugh) where Java would be a godsend. U

  • The best way to learn Java... (Score:5, Informative)

    by barcodez ( 580516 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @12:55PM (#6453698)
    if you want to learn a particular Java aspect look at Sun Java Tutorials. [sun.com] (they are excellent a free).
    If you want to leatn OO programming and Java I would suggest Think In Java [mindview.net] (it's the best and it's free).

  • Common Lisp (Score:3, Informative)

    by Lemmy Caution ( 8378 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @01:00PM (#6453745) Homepage
    Now if I could only find a book as good to introduce me to Common Lisp.
    What's wrong with the Paul Graham books on LISP? On Lisp [paulgraham.com] can even be downloaded for free, and ANSI Common Lisp [paulgraham.com] is a great introduction to the language.

  • Best Series For Learning Java (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jyuter ( 48936 ) <jyuter&gmail,com> on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @01:01PM (#6453755) Homepage Journal
    Has got to be the Core Java Series. Between the fundamentals [bestwebbuys.com] and the advanced [bestwebbuys.com] books, I haven't found anything as complete and as clear as this.
    • I'd tried Java back in the 1.1 days, but had no real use for the language at that time so I let it drop. Earlier this year, though, a project dropped in my lap that really needed what Java provides, so I started looking for good books on the subject. After browsing through the tremendous amount of Java books at my local bookstore, I settled on the Core Java series.

      By reading the two volumes you mention, I was able to come up to speed quickly. In fact, I finished the project just one month after buying tho

  • question... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by inkedmn ( 462994 )
    am i the only one getting a distinct "for dummies" vibe off of this book?

    no comment on the book itself, it's just that "head-first" seems like it could very easily be the next "complete idiot's guide"...

  • Viewing at level 5 (Score:4, Funny)

    by 955301 ( 209856 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @01:02PM (#6453766) Journal
    This is the first time I've tried to look at a story with 63 comments with my threshold set to 5, no comments showed up!

    Somehow I knew though, when the article starts with I decided to learn Java because Javascript wasn't good enough., that there would be trouble!

    Begun, the Javascript != Java flamewars have.

  • Learning Java (Score:2, Informative)

    by StarCat76 ( 644079 )
    I read O'Reilly's Learning Java (1st Edition) and really liked the way the book is written. Its no-bs way of shwoing the concepts is useful for beginners who want to learn the structure of the language, and for experts, who use it as a reference for the advanced concepts. All in all, I'd recommend it thoroughly. -Neil
  • I saw some 6-year old kids talking the other day. Kid 1: Have you seen my website lately? Kid 2: no. Kid 1: It has a new layout now. Kid 2: cool!
    It's only a matter of time before these kids will want to learn JAVA, and a basic, picture-laden book is sure to attract their attention quicker than a tome that they probably can't even lift.
  • ...a language so strongly committed to OO as Java...

    Mmmmmm.

  • When I first learnt Java (6 years ago ... JDK 1.0.2), I went with the Java tutorial. Considering that there were not too many books written on the subject at the time that was not a hard choice to make.

    My verdict is that the tutorial is not a bad way to learn Java programming at all. The trick is to read every line (dont skip anything), and try every example in there, and in addition try your own variations. Worked for me, but needless to add ... your mileage may vary

  • Them Java Coders (Score:5, Funny)

    by inertia187 ( 156602 ) * on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @01:15PM (#6453880) Homepage Journal
    About them Java Coders,
    codin' here and there.
    Just like Gosling's Keynote said,
    Java's Everywhere!
    Them platform neutral Java Coders,
    runnin' hotspot mode.
    Keep them classes nice and neat,
    'til it turns bytecode.
    Multi-threaded Runnables,
    and Serialization,
    keeps those members all in line,
    avoiding race condition.
    How to be a Java Coder,
    here's thee easy way:
    Go to sun.com's web site
    and get the SDK.

  • ... but achieving clean, efficient object-oriented design is another one.

    Transforming the buzzwords of "encapsulation", "reusability", "modularity" into workable and efficient solutions requires way more work than strictly learning the language.

    Also, a common pitfall is to believe that you can do whatever because some garbage collector is taking care of memory management.

    Before even reading whatever about java, I'd strongly recommend :

    - of course, Design Patterns [amazon.com], by Erich Gamma et al;

    - Prin [amazon.com]
    • "encapsulation", "reusability", "modularity" all features of good coding, whether the coding is procedural or object-oriented.

      Probably even more important for good coding is EXTENSIVE comments and self-documenting variable names. If I never see the variables 'x', 'y', 'i', etc. again in my life I'd be a happy man. For god's sake tell me what you're counting and why.

      Time and again I've seen how writing easy to maintain code is SO much more important than writing 'optimized' code. You can't pre-optimize

  • OO techniques are seldom fully understood (Score:5, Informative)

    by boster ( 124383 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @01:37PM (#6454100)
    The majority of developers do NOT fully understand OO principles. There is a difference between learning the syntax and the basic features and understanding how to leverage them. Most OO developers can write and use simple classes, use inheritance and basic polymorphism. This is generally all that is taught in courses and language books. This is also sufficient to get most things done. :) However, most people this level of knowledge do not understand just how much more can be done. A good example of more powerful OO programming is in the Gang of Four book [amazon.com]. The conceptual leap from procedural to basic OO programming is but the first step. I guess what I'm getting at is that once you're at this point where you're using basic OO techniques, then there's still a lot more you can learn (even if you know each and every language feature and its syntax). Just be aware of that and look into it someday.
    • Very true. OO isn't just a way of programming, it's a way of thinking about problem-solving and about complex systems. Java's good for it not just because it has a good implementation of OO principles, but also because the (huge) standard library is generally well thought out, and some parts are a masterclass in good OO design. Using it introduces you to some powerful OO techniques, and encourages you to use them yourself.

      My way of thinking about objects is to consider them as little people. Each pers

  • HFJ is a great idea, but this edition is laden with errors in examples which are a minefield for a person who's trying to learn the language.

    I tested this book by handing it to my other half; she figured out at least 3 serious errors and put in errata for them; you'll find the errata at O'Reilly [oreilly.com].

    It'll be a much better book, and recommedable for beginners in the second printing/edition when these are fixed.

  • For your next book... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by RevMike ( 632002 ) <revMike@NosPAM.gmail.com> on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @01:59PM (#6454372) Journal
    I highly recommend Design Patterns Java Workbook [amazon.com] by John Metsker as your second Java/OO book. It also takes an "interactive" approach to learning, developing a number of key GoF [amazon.com] patterns in Java.This book is a practical way to learn not just Java syntax, but real design skills in Java.

    After that read Java Development With Ant [amazon.com] by Hatcher and Loughran for good info about how to set up real java development environments. Ant is a tool that fits a similar ecological niche as make, but has tons of extra features particularly useful to Java developers.

    Oh, and don't bother with an ide. Real men use vim [vim.org].

  • "I've been writing software for nigh on twenty years without it - why make life hard? "

    I think there is a distinction here that needs to be brought up that I feel many programmers are unaware of. This is aimed for programmers who decided to go out there and learn Java who have never learned an OO language.

    I think the goal of programmers should be to learn to code well. Having said that, those who then go on to "learn how to program java" from an instructional book are a bit mistaken in my humble o

  • Writing Learning Java... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by patniemeyer ( 444913 ) * <pat@pat.net> on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @02:14PM (#6454509) Homepage
    Hi, I'm Pat Niemeyer, the author of Learning Java. As I sat down this morning to begin work on the fifth edition of the book for Java 1.5 I was
    pleasantly surprised to see this item on Slashdot (my first stop of the day). So I thought I'd chime in with a little bit about what it's been like working on this book over the years and ask for you help in making it better.

    The short story is that trying to authoritatively cover a topic as broad as the Java language and libraries and to do so without simply producing a giant shelf-filling reference tome or dry as toast text book is a very difficult challenge. I think there are parts of the book that have met this challenge and parts that can be better in the future.

    Now, I consider myself to be a relatively funny and creative person (also sexy, and other adjectives as well) and I think if someone had asked me back in 1995 what my first book would have been like I might have imagined something a bit lighter and breezier than an 800 page book about a programming language. But I think that the Slashdot audience in particular will appreciate that despite its size and some obligatory coverage, this is a book written by someone who has a passion for software and architecture and that I have tried to pour my creativity and time into crafting elegant, insightful, and *minimalist* examples. I wrote this book for people who think and learn the way that I do and that may not appeal to everyone.

    I think the strongest parts of the book are in the most exciting and difficult areas of Java - topics such as advanced networking, multi-threaded
    programming, and XML. IMHO Learning Java's coverage of these topics is deeper than some single topic books in their entirety.

    The Java language is a moving target and one that gets more moving parts every day. The greatest challenge in writing about it now is not what to cover, but what to leave out. I have spent many many hours on the phone with my editor (Mike Loukides) over the years debating about what we need to include and what we need to cut. In recent editions which have included a CD in the jacket (yah, I know... book CDs are normally useless) I have started moving the old, less relevant material (such as some of the original AWT API stuff) to the CD.

    I have also experimented with the introductory tutorial chapter - trying to give a broad overview of the whole language in one chapter before diving into details. Some people may see that and be turned off. I hope they'll dig a little deeper.

    I am very interested in what Slashdot readers have to say about how to make the book better. Your comments would be very well timed right now as I am updating the book for Java 1.5 as we speak.

    I hope you'll check out my book if you need to learn (or learn more about) Java. If you have already mastered Java then I hope you'll buy a copy of my book and give it to a homeless person ;);)

    Thanks,
    Pat Niemeyer
    Author of Learning Java, O'Reilly & Associates and the BeanShell Java scripting language (www.beanshell.org).

  • Online docs (Score:3, Informative)

    by Hard_Code ( 49548 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @02:29PM (#6454641)
    Don't forget that Sun has a excellent set of Java tutorials online for free:

    Tutorials & Short Courses [sun.com]

    These are essentially the contents of the Sun press line of books.
  • Neither of the books mentioned are as good a learning book as Thinking in Java by Bruce Eckle. Which has the benifit of being free as in beer: http://www.mindview.net/Books/TIJ/ [mindview.net].
  • I've noticed on Slashdot particularly that many programmers, even the ./ editors, seem a little, if not a lot, biased against Java. As someone who has been productive and happy with the language this doesn't make sense to me unless it has something to do with the corporate stigma surrounding the language. And I know its not great for desktop apps either... but come on-- cross-platform, vendor-neutral, tons of open-source support, development tools through the nose, all the apis you could ask for.

    Alright,

    • A lot of people don't like sun's licensing.

      I don't like OOP.

      Example of why:

      //---- Fat Wire Approach ----

      module taxPerson_A( aperson: personClass)
      declare taxable: decimal
      taxable = aperson.income
      if aperson.filing = "w2"
      taxable = taxable * 0.8
      else
      taxable = taxable * 0.9
      end if
      taxable = taxable - (2000 * aperson.dependants)
      aperson.tax = taxable
      end module

      //------- Thin Wire Approach --------
      module taxPerson_B(income: decimal, _
      filing: string, _

  • You must be joking. Please take a look at Smalltalk or Ruby before talking about OO.

  • Yes! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Hawkins ( 219795 )

    I received this book just last week and am slowly working my way through it in-between work and other projects. I and am very pleased with it. The reviewer is correct in that this book makes learning much, much easier. It is, however, a little short on in-depth material, but I feel it can be forgiven for that in light of how well it teaches the basics.

    How well does it teach? Through 4 years of a comp-sci degree that taught things using C++, I never understood Object-Oriented design as well as I do afte

  • I never get sick of hearing that... (Score:3, Informative)

    by the-build-chicken ( 644253 ) on Wednesday July 16, 2003 @06:21PM (#6456737)
    I decided to learn Java. I'd spent some time using JavaScript

    ok...they're really nothing alike, except for the word 'java'. By the way, if you want to learn anything java, why waste cash on books...just head over to java.sun.com and go through their doco section...they have full documentation on almost every api, and have been keeping it up to date for as long as I can remember (the java trail is an excellent peice of work)

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