Customer Reviews
Average Customer Review
(7 customer reviews) 15 of 18 people found the following review helpful
Starts with a clean sheet of paper for the complete beginner.,
July 3, 2006 John Matlock "Gunny" (Winnemucca, NV) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Java Programming for the Absolute Beginner (Paperback)
This is a book oriented to the complete beginner. It basically starts with a blank sheet of paper and begins with a simple applet that just outputs a single line of text to the screen.
From here he goes on to provide a very simply step by step tutorial to cover the fundamental rules of Java. In this book he doesn't get everything there is to know about Java. It's an introductory book, it covers the bases of the language well enough to get you started. You will probably want an additional book before you become the local master.
If I have one complaint about the book it is one that I complain about a lot on Java books. On page 5 he starts talking about object oriented programming. And he talks on for two or three pages. Then he skips saying anything more about object oriented programming for about 160 pages. By then the reader has completely forgotten about the few pages on page 5.
10 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Dreadful--Misses the point!,
December 2, 2008 John R. Donoghue (Pennington, NJ) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Java Programming for the Absolute Beginner (Paperback)
This book misses the entire point of the "... for the Absolute Beginner" series. The premise is to ease beginners into a programming language by using games and game-programming. Dring the course of programming increasingly complex games, the reader gets masters the basics of the language. The book fails to deliver on that promise.
The games featured on the cover aren't programmed. In fact, the book teaches a very small subset of of the Java language.
Instead, the author wastes the reader's time, including a completely inapproriate introduction to UML, which does NOT help readers at this introductory level; to me it just came across as self-important.
If you want a gentle introduction to Java, I'd recommend "Java for Dummies" by Burd for a nice on-ramp to the language, or "Head First Java" by Sierra and Bates if you plan to do more serious work (I know, it sounds bizarre, but it's true).
If you want to see what this book should have...Read more
15 of 21 people found the following review helpful
Poorly organized and not geared towards the aspiring professional,
July 3, 2006 This review is from: Java Programming for the Absolute Beginner (Paperback)
When this book says it is aimed at the absolute beginner it means beginner to programming rather than a programmer with no experience of Java. The book's format of making the topic interesting by gradually building up examples that are games is a good concept but the book does not execute the concept very well.
In practice the book launches into Java and programming in too complex a fashion for the total beginner, there are lots of abbreviations (often not explained) and it discusses terms and concepts that are not explained until a much later and do not need to be introduced this early. It seems odd to be using terms like how many bits a data type has without explaining the term, particularly considering the audience of this book. References to hex and octal are not explained, and as you go into chapter 3 the book covers methods of the random and math class before covering how to use "if" and even what classes are. The flow and structure of this book feels very awkward,...Read more
