Head First Java, 2nd Edition by Kathy Sierra, Bert Bates Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Head First Java, 2nd Edition
Book Review: Learning is fun again!
Summary: 5 Stars
As soon as I started reading Head First Java, I knew I would like it. The format held my interest, and the exercises were fun to do. I didn't skip the exercises like I usually do with other books, where they sometimes seem too easy. And I find that I remember the concepts I learned. I am fairly new to Java, and before I read this book, I found some of the concepts confusing, including OO concepts. I now have a much better understanding of the Java language and OO.In the past, I've learned from the traditional type of text book, but the explanations in Head First Java seemed much easier to understand and remember, and the humor and graphics made it fun. It has the usual errors and typos, but they didn't distract from my learning experience. Now I better understand what I read in my Java reference books. I recommend this book to anyone who would like to learn or better understand Java, as long as you don't mind having fun while you learn. I am very much looking forward to seeing other books in this series!
Book Review: The Best Book in the WORLD!
Summary: 5 Stars
Man this book rock the Java world big time. I love to do the exercises, there so easy. Head Frist your nubmer 1Book Review: Revised Opinion
Summary: 4 Stars
I'm trying to edit my previous review, as I was harsher than needed. In fact the first exercise is technically correct. Even after I realized that, I didn't like the fact that it is obscure code when done. The authors may believe that a tricky piece of code makes a good first problem for a student, but I think it is liable to be merely frustrating for many.The writing is fascinating and engaging, but I wonder if a different style of exercises might be better for most people learning a computer language? I also wonder how many people bother to do exercises in books, perhaps I'm a little dotty to be trying or concerned.
I would have been better off thinking of them as entertaining puzzles rather than teaching tools. As puzzles they are entertaining, but I think only a small number of people learn best by only looking at challenging material from the beginning.
Perhaps the kind of mind that could develop the innnovative text material can't help but develop innovative exercises. In my own opinion, a set of exercises ranging from simple to complex gives a student some confidence and a picture of how well they grasp the material. The exercises should both reinforce the lesson and give the student some hope.
Despite my problems with the exercises, if you are tired of boring texts about Java with the only variance being the level of formality, you'll find Head First Java a refreshing change of pace and a very entertaining way to be educated.
Book Review: This is the only best book i found for fundamentals in java
Summary: 5 Stars
i can say using this book is the only best way to learn java, the techniques the authors used in explaining very abstract concepts are very helpful for me, i was not able to stop reading the book as i was understanding each and every concept the book explains in such a easy way which was supposed to be very difficult when i was reading other java books, if u miss this book you are really missing some thing in learning java.I was programming in java from the past few months , i was utterly confused the way objects worked and communicated, what made me to think for months was cleared within minutes after reading this book, i really cant wait to thank the authors as they really revolutionized the way of writing books.
Book Review: Helped with OO, but not much else. (Revised)
Summary: 4 Stars
I'm revising my review yet again. The reason is that I've read more Java books now and have come back to this one for a few reasons. I'll explain below.I'm a C programmer and needed to understand the Object Oriented ways of programming. I understood the general syntax of Java, but got a bit lost when dealing with the OO (Object Oriented) areas. Since my current job is wanting me to learn Java for a few projects, they sent me to a 1 week crash course on Java, which didn't really help too much.
A week later, I picked up this book. There weren't any reviews on this book yet, so I just picked it up in [local store]one afternoon and started reading the introduction. Based on the introduction, I found it to be a book I wanted to actually buy. The introduction gave some great pointers on studying, how the common brain works and such. After buying it, 5 chapters in I was loving this book. As a matter of fact, I loved reading this book all the way through. It was quite an entertaining book. However, entertaining isn't always helpful. There were some areas that I think are much needed in programming texts that were either left to a vague description in the Appendix, or left out all together.
Despite all of the pictures and weird layout of the book, it did an *excellent* job at explaining Object Orientation. I think what helped me out the most were the little "Java Exposed" interviews with the parts of Java. While these were kind of silly, they truly did help me understand the material better. Also, the "Bullet Points" were a great help as well. It did what I wanted it to do, and that was to help me get a firm understanding of OO.
Also, the fact that it goes over I/O very well and also spends some time going over a bit of GUI development, made this book even better.
What this book did help me learn was Object Orientation. What it did not help me learn were a lot of the finer points of Java. These areas (such as why you should override equals() and hashCode() and what their tie-ins are) most definitely should be looked into by either reading some other books (Java 2 Sun Certified Programmer & Developer ISBN: 0072226846 is great!) or going to the java.sun.com site and reading their documentation. There are some finer points of Java that just weren't covered in the book due to it being a beginners guide. However, please seek further knowledge and don't consider this book the do all/say all of the entire Java language.
All in all, this book is great. I still wish they would of added some more small items such as a simple explanation of finalize() in the garbage collection chapter and also explain the purpose and maybe even a quick example of how to overried the equals() and hashCode() methods properly since they tend to talk about how important it is in the book. Anyway, now that I've read more Java books, I've found this one to be the most pleasing so far.
Hope this helped.