Beginners Guide

Java Programming for the Absolute Beginner, Second Edition

Format: Paperback
Author: Jphn P Flynt
ReleaseDate: 16 June, 2006
Publisher: Course Technology PTR
Rating:

Poorly organized and not geared towards the aspiring professional
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. 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.

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, covering try/catch and the basics of exception handling very early in the book before the total novice even knows WHAT you are trying to catch and why.

The general jokey examples such as snippets of song lyrics and how to add comments around them, or a fortune teller routine demonstrating random numbers that print text such as "You will talk to someone who has bad breath" seem aimed more at attracting kids that want to write simple games on their home computers rather than someone who wants to learn Java and computer programming for professional reasons. If you are serious about learning Java, try the latest editions of either "Head First Java" or "Core Java" and skip this book. If you have never programmed at all, first try "Sams Teach Yourself Beginning Programming in 24 Hours". The Sam's Teach Yourself series can be rather hit-or-miss, but that particular book is definitely a hit.

Since Amazon omits the table of contents I show that next:
1. Getting Started
2. Variables, Data Types, and Simple I/O
3. The Fortune Teller: Random Numbers, Conditionals, and Arrays
4. The Number Guesser: Using Loops and Exception Handling
5. Blackjack: Object Oriented Programming
6. Making Your Life Easier: The java. util Package and Generics
7. Learning to Read and Write: The java. io Package
8. Creating a GUI Using the Abstract Windowing Toolkit
9. Advanced GUI, Layout Managers, and Event Handling
10. Writing Applets
11. Rendering 2D Graphics
12. Animation, Sounds, and Threads
13. Putting it All Together: The Block Game
.

Starts with a clean sheet of paper for 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. This is a book oriented to the complete beginner.

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. .