Head First Java

Great read for new Java programmers

I had to read this book for my class. Here I was thinking that this would be another boring book of how to code...wrong! This is a very entertaining and educational book. There are many examples and illustrations, and even some fun mind teasers at the end of every chapter! I feel that I gained a lot of information from this book, where previous to reading I was in the dark on how to program Java. I recommend it to the newbies. It is a great read. You just flow from chapter to chapter. It is NOT tedious and boring to read.

3 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

This book makes me look like a genius

My classmates & professors think I'm a genius. If only they knew what I used to get this way, they would be amazed. I will have to admit the book's style makes it a love it or hate it situation. You'll either think this book is hysterical or totally annoying. I loved it, and found I really understood the material well enough to use it after reading. The other great thing was I understood the material well enough to remember it later, I "owned it". That doesn't happen very often for me. Somehow this book takes some really tough concepts, like generic collections, threads, or serialization, and makes them easy. After reading a hundred pages in other really, really dry boring books and not really getting it, I read a small simple chapter in "Head First" and I got it down cold.

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

Get the 2nd edition - not this one

I love the Head First books. However, this book is out of date. It talks about Java 1.4 (aka Java 2) and almost everyone is using at least Java 5 which adds some new features such as an enhanced for loop and annotations. Get the 2nd edition which covers this newer version. Don't get me wrong, you'll still learn basic Java with this book but it's better to start with what everyone's using.

Good starting point

If you're trying to learn Java for the first time, this is a great book. If you're an advanced programmer, not so much.

Good for young readers

Have you read 'Cartoon History of the Universe'? The irreverent cartoon book that starts by teaching cosmology? Perhaps inspired by that, Sierra and Bates have taken a similar tack to teaching Java. Charmingly distinctive. Aimed at the complete tyro to Java and object-oriented programming. The authors' pedagogy is that you learn better through wide use of visuals, since you can assimilate these better than almost-pure pages of lightly adorned text. So there are copious diagrams, profusely annotated by handwritten doodles. Plus they also provide many exercises, letting you learn by doing. All to the good. It does have the effect of bulking up the book. Not meant for brevity. A standard Java text could be half this size. But that is the tradeoff in this teaching style. The book is not necessarily for everyone. A programmer already experienced in another language may want a standard textual approach. The book's strength is in its appeal to a different person: Not just a Java beginner, but someone completely new to any programming. A far larger audience than experienced programmers. Specifically, the book would be good at the high school level or even primary school. Seriously. I see no reason why a smart fifth grader who wants to do more with computers than browse or write email cannot benefit from the book. There ARE computer books for this age group, but most (all?) seem to be for user level interaction, NOT programming. So if you have a child who is poking around computers, and you want her to have go further, why not use this book? Ditto if YOU are that fifth grader.

A different kind of Java book for beginners and experts

When I first saw ¿Head First Java¿, it reminds me of the colorful ¿conversational English¿ books I had when I started to learn English years ago. The casual, humorous books have turned out effective for English language learning. Is that style good for the Java language learners as well? Is this type of books for beginners only?

With those questions in mind, I started to read ¿Head First Java¿. Since I consider myself a Java expert (I wrote a Java book myself, after all), I decided that I would NOT read the book from cover to cover. Instead, I would randomly flip through the book for the humorous stories and photos. I figured that if I cannot learn much new about Java from a ¿beginner¿ book, I can at least have some fun.

Geez, I was wrong. I was ADDICTED to the book¿s short stories, annotated code snippets, mock interviews, puzzle games and brain exercises. They are not only entertaining but also informative. It may be a beginner¿s book but the stuff they cover are definitely deep enough for expert readers as well (e.g. multiple inheritance, polymorphism, inner classes, threads, RMI, ¿ just to name a few). The best of all is that I can actually remember the things I learned from the book because I associate them with the stories and pictures. I guess it has something to do with the fact that both sides of my brain are active when reading this book: The right side is for the stories and the left side is for the technical and logic stuff.

There are other great Java books (e.g. ¿Thinking in Java¿ by Bruce Eckel) in the market. But they are all very serious and require the readers to spend hours to read entire chapters. The great thing about ¿Head First Java¿ is that the bite-size code snippets and stories allow me to learn something about Java in my 5-10 minutes spare time, one piece a time.

The overall writing style is casual and enlightened. The presentation style (fonts and placements of graphical elements) fits the content very well. The book covers a wide variety of Java topics including: basic code structure and language syntax, OOP concepts, math and numbers, exception handling, the Swing GUI library, serialization, network, and distributed computing.

Of course, the casual style is not for everyone. I know people who love the re-assuring feeling from ¿serious¿ books. But I can re-assure you that Kathy and Bert are authoritative figures in the Java training community. The content is absolutely first class. I highly recommend ¿Head First Java¿ for both Java beginners and expert readers.

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