5 comments about Java Programming: Comprehensive.

1. I had the privledge to teach a course with this book a couple of years ago. This is the perfect book for people who have never programmed at all or who are apprehensive about learning to program. It explains everything in the simplest terms possible and has lots of great exercises and examples. If you were considering buying Java For Dummies, buy this book instead. This book will be just as simple, but much better written, contains exercises to help you practice, and the title won't insult your inteligence. :-)
   Of course no book can be everything to everybody. This book is perfect for brand new beginners. If you have already programmed in other languages and you want a faster introduction to Java, then you might consider Thinking In Java by Bruce Eckel or Java: How To Program by Deitel & Deitel.
   Good luck and welcome to the exciting world of Java!



2. This is the best book I have read on Java, and I have read many. Everyone is different, and no book is perfect, but I do not understand some of the very bad reviews this book has gotten. I think it very logically takes one through the subject matter and offers a lot of practice.

   Drawbacks to watch out for: 1) You basically have to take the course to get the answers to the exercises. However, most of the exercises are solvable with practice. 2) The binding is very poorly designed; you might want to reinforce it when you first get the book. 3) Some of the criticism of this book is warranted - there are some flaws. I got lost several times. However, I have read other books that have gotten raves, and they have not done for me what this book does.




3. I'm on chapter 8 (of 14) and here's my opinion.

   On a scale of A to F, I give it a C.

   The format is great as a course text (lots of examples, footnotes, summaries, questions, and exercises, nice learning gradient), but the author's writing style manages to make a simple concept sound mysterious and complex. It does cover the Java language, but in a far from outstanding way. Having read the first few chapters of "Java in a Nutshell" first I was fortunate to not get mislead and left in the dark on one issue after another. I am only continuing my reading because this is the textbook for my college class.

   My real complaint is that its just so painful to read. I read one muddy explanation after another, turn to the parallel chapter in another book, and "poof", the other author removes the ambiguity with a crystal clear explanation in 1/5th the words and 3 or 4 critical insights that make logical sense of it all.

   Just a few examples of the poor style:

   1. Often Java Programming says "you may" or "you should" where the other books (or even Sun) say "always" or "you must".

   2. She list "friendly" as an access modifier but I find no such option in the Sun documentation and trying it results in a compiler error. This is just one example of wrong information, there are several. Even if it were right, I would expect an comment saying it is obscure and not obvious in the public documentation.

   The "Learn Jave in 21 Days" lists all the possible modifiers in a nice table indicating which are appropriate where. "Java Programming" buries it in pages of text and even then fails to make clear when each can be used.

   3. The instructions for creating the sample Demo programs are too vervose. EG: She places paragraphs throughout it saying things like "open this file in your text editor ... place your cursor at the end of ...". Does she get paid by the page or what? The final result gets lost and meanwhile my attention was dulled and I miss some critical point because I was just skimming.

   4. Several of the examples have the compiled version on the CD, but not the source.

   5. She misses countless opportunity to point out some insight. For example, on the applet method "setLocation()", I couldn't find where she says it won't work if you use "invalidate(), validate()" which she just got done telling you to use to refresh the screen. Maybe I skimmed by it but I wasted an hour figuring that one out.

   6. The Chapter numbers are not printed on the page headings, a minor annoyance for a college text.

   7. The multiple choice questions sometimes have more than one, or no correct answers causing doubt.

   The list could go on but I hope my point is taken. This author is not an overly talented technical writer. "Painful to write, painful to read" comes to mind.

   If you don't mind the endless ambiguities, and do as I'm doing and read the parallel chapter in some other book (like "Learning Java in 21 Days", a very well written text), I believe you will learn the basics of Java in the end of the course.

   While there are probably some poorer books on Java, why not use some truely well written books written by authors with a real talent for leaving the reader clear about the subject.

   I wish I could say who those are.

   I've purchased and read portions of Java 2 Weekend Crash Course, Sam's Teach yourself Java in 21 Days, Java in a Nutshell, Understanding Java, Effective Java, and Thinking in Java.

   I can say I've always found a clearer presentation in one of these books, but the questions and exercises in Java Programming have always been more complete and helpful.




4. This is the best beginning programming oop book, not just for java. I found it clear and concise. The book is approx 670 pages unlike some other books of up to 1000 or more pages. I like how the author explains everything thoroughly before going on to a new topic. There are complete questions and exercises at the end of each chapter and test what was covered in the chapter that I found very useful also. There are some minor errors that I found such as the access modifier friendly, and connecting (private and protected) which was available in java 1.1 and older versions but those are the only errors, other than that this is the best intro to java book, infact my favorite book. The codes are brief and self explanatory compare to books that I also have like (Thinking in Java, Java How to program by Deitel, Teach yourself Java, and a few other books I still use this book as a reference and the second edition of this book is now available as of 7/24/02 which I'm ordering right now be sure to use this book if your new to programming oop in general not just java. I started C++ right after completing this book and the fundamentals I developed from this book helped me learn C++ quicker. Don't fall for those reviewers that gave this book 1 star. Besides her new book is covering the swing packages verses the old awt. Buy it and have fun learning java.



5. I have read about 4 intro to java books before I got to this and nothig made more sense than this. Especially if you're completely new to programming and computers you'll not go wrong by choosing this book as your java beginner. The author does a great job demonstrating how to even configure your jdk and what kind of error you'll get if it isn't configured properly. That said, it does have very minor errors though not too many. The other good thing about the book which most programming books don't offer is, that it has alot of exercise questions and programs at the end of each section to work on to emphasize and implement what you've learned in that chapter or section. So in all it is a great beginner book but not for intermediate and advanced programmers. I completely disagree with most other reviewers.

No comments about Lewis & Loftus Java Software Solutions.

5 comments about Java Programming on Linux.

1. I honestly believe Microsoft has intentionally and unintentionally helped keep a very powerful crossplatform tool combination. Programming Java and Linux go together like cookies and milk. Since it's inception in the early 90's, Linux has always been a superior platform for Internet development and Java is and will be one of several paramount tools for the web. This book is written for people who know what they want, not for Windows weenies.



2. Java development on Linux has lagged behind until now. The news of the day is Java Rocks on Linux. This book goes into detail how to get set up, what tools are available and where to get them. There is a CDROM that comes with the book and a website (CDROMS tend to get stale fast) for crucial updates, news and other vital information. IMHO programming Java on Linux has been one of the best kept secrets of the late 90s. This book is a step toward disclosure. Linux and Java go together like milk and cookies.



3. I don't know if the other reviewers have read the books carefully or not because the books have been over-rated. First of all, the book is filled with reference stuff for both linux and java which do not help people to understand either of them. The useful stuffs are to help people WHERE to get java softwares, HOW to install them and how to CONFIGURE them both as SYSTEM wide and USER limited usage and HOW to RUN THE SOFTWARES. In these aspects, the book did not do a very good job. The one website the book referred to is BLACKDOWN which is a good site but the java softwares there are not updated often( it still carries jdk1.2 beta ! ).

   In conclusion, the book should be trimmed down in half and emphasizes more in those aforementioned stuffs and cut the price. To be fair, the book does contain some good stuffs but these are rare.




4. This book dose not teach you any think, everything is a reference to some other sources.
   I will agree with a comments about Java and Linux going hand to hand but this book will not
   show you how to program java on linux. I have seen many other books in that price range
   and by far they where much better.



5. This book is outdated and provides very little real information on programming in Java. As other reviewers have stated, it is primarily a list of (outdated) Java programming resources. The author also makes the mistake of assuming throughout the book that the book will be read from cover to cover. As I tried, however much in vain, to use the book as a reference, as I thinks most readers do, I constantly ran into unexplained references to "phenomena" and had to go back through the book looking for the initial explanation of said phenomena. Of course, we should always expect that a book nearly three years old would be somewhat outdated, but it would be nice, for a change, to find a publisher driven by more than mere greed who would recognize the diminishing utility of a book like this and adjust the price accordingly. After reading quite a bit of the book, in retrospect I would not even pay half of the [price] when I bought this book, but at least a 50% price-reduction would have meant a little less of my hard-earned dinero wasted and thus available to buy a truly useful book on Java Programming on Linux, if one truly exists...This book should be pulled from the eShelves and replaced with something useful. SAVE YOUR MONEY!!!

5 comments about Professional JMS.

1. This book is just a copy of JMS tutorials from java site and has examples which are written using jmq which is no longer available as it has now become part of iPlanet group and they have broken compatibility (Interfaces have been changed) Not the worst book but certainly worst wrox book i have ever read



2. This book is just a copy of JMS tutorials from java site and has examples which are written using jmq which is no longer available as it has now become part of iPlanet group and they have broken compatibility (Interfaces have been changed) Not the worst book but certainly worst wrox book i have ever read



3. This book covers a lot of ground about JMS. However, the problem is that it is written by many authors, which results in repetition of some subject, bad structure of the book and more pages than necessary for explaining the subjects.

   The first 5 chapters are on 250 pages and cover the basic about JMS, but I think "Java Message Service" by Monson-Haefel does a better job here. However, I appreciate that there are sequence diagrams in the first chapter that shows basic design patterns for MOM-based applications. The next two chapters is code example that shows how to use JMS from a web application and from EJBs. I'm not too found about this kind of lengthy code examples.

   The chapter about JMS and Clustering is very technical, but still only scratches the surface. This is a subject that needs an own book to be covered completely. The next chapter called "Distributed Logging Using JMS" is again a lengthy code example, but a very useful one!

   Chapter 10 is about XML Messaging with some XML code example. I think this chapter, like some of the other chapters as well, covers too little to be of some real value and too much for just being an overview. Chapter 11 is about Mobile Applications and the criticism against this chapter is the same as the chapter about XML.

   All and all this is a book that covers a lot of subjects related to JMS, but it does it in a boring and verbose way.




4. I expect that with introduction of JMS and Message Driven Beans which are based on this technology we will see very big movement towards implementing various application scenarious based on JMS. This book definitely could help you to decide what should be taken in account. I also like chapter on Clustering and Scalability - each enterprise (and you as developer for this enterprise) should think about this during design stage. List of various JMS providers (SonicMQ, IBM MQ Series, FioranoMQ, WebLogic) and implemented by them features could also be helpful.



5. I knew nothing about JMS when I bought this book. What I like about it is that it explains the basic concepts of this technology (or should I say API?), And I personally think this is the most important thing. It then moves slowly on how to exploit all the capabilities of JMS.

   The book introduces the different aspects of JMS (topics, queues, durable subscribers, etc) and it also explains with java examples. I actually didn't follow much the examples, but I used some code snippets when using it with a different application server. So it also helps.

   Anyways, you can always refer back to this book if you have any JMS doubts

5 comments about Client/Server Programming with Java and CORBA, 2nd Edition.

1. This is definitely the best stuff around for all CORBA lovers.The book is detailed and goes step by step.A reader who is already well aquainted with OO techniques,RMI,Java and C++ will find a few chapters a bit boring.This is one piece of work which gives self-starters a chance to start programming using the CORBA architecture.The comparisions between different clients & servers breaks quite a few notions about C++ clients and Java Servers.The undermined Java Application receives a boost with such a comparision. Further on, The different approaches to using CORBA and explaining them in depth is one of the achievements of this book.A good round up of various ORBs, Transcation Monitors is also well appreciated.



2. This is a fantastic resource; it has saved us in many situations. We are in development with Java and CORBA access via BroadVision and this has helped us tremendously.



3. When you look at the table of contents, you can discover the book is not just about how Java and Corba work together. Or let me put it this way, that's not the only theme you can get from this insightful book. My take-away after reading all the parts where it discusses the history and difference between Corba and other distributed object technology is a satisfatorily complete overview of all these middleware/messaging technology, which are all important contributors to today's red hot J2EE-compliant application server market (BEA WebLogic, IBM Websphere), or what EJB likes to be known as: ORB with TP monitor capability.

   Granted, the book is a little outdated (written in early 1998 apparently), and this is about the only drawback of the book. Hope the authors will come up with a new edition with all the latest development in this topic soon. And mind you again, I skipped all the implementation parts of the book (which is the only reason I gave it 4 stars instead of 5 stars - because I don't wanna be potentially overrating a part that I didn't read). I focussed on the high level discussion on CORBA concepts (which explains it better than other books I've read on this subject), how Sun started to endorse it with Java, as well as comparing technologies (comparable not in the technolgy purist's sense, but in the sense that they are 'enablers' for IT folks who wanna implement remote object invocation over enterprise LAN or over internet) such as traditional sockets, CGI, RMI, Servlet, and the major CORBA rival - DCOM. If you've used these various technologies before separately like I did, and sometimes felt a bit overwhelmed by all the different standard and practices, this book provides an EXCELLENT melting point where suddenly why there're all such various levels of technology, and the relative pros and cons of each of them all makes sense.




4. An exceptionally well-written book by best-selling authors. The book
   is a great way to learn about Client/Server programming in general, and
   CORBA in particular. This book is massive, totaling over 1000 pages
   (a huge increase over the first edition). It includes a CDROM with all of the
   code examples as well Borland's Vivibroker and others.

   Note the book is not just about teaching CORBA programming using
   the Java language. It also provides large amounts of material on Java Beans and

   Enterprise Java Beans. This is a teaching book not a reference book.
   While it does provide Java coding examples, developers will not use it
   to write their code (at least I don't).

   Book Sections:
   1- CORBA Meets Java (3 chapters)
   2- Core CORBA/Java (3 chapters)
   3- The Dynamic CORBA (3 chapters)
   4- CORBA and Its Competitors (7 chapters)
   5- The Existential CORBA (6 chapters)
   6- JDBC 2-Tier Versus 3-Tier (4 chapters)
   7- From JavaBeans to EnterpriseJavaBeans (8 chapters)
   8- Grand Finale: Club Med with CORBA/JavaBeans (4 chapters)

   The CORBA coverage is extensive: BOA, POA, Interface Repository, Java-to-IDL and
   IDL-to-Java mappings, and DII among others. However, no coverage of the CORBA Services,
   besides the Naming Service.

   Be prepared for their style of writing. As with their other best-selling books,
   they have Zog the Martian (see the cover) and Soapboxes, which give their insightful opinions on
   issues and problems with the subject. Personally, I enjoyed it as it makes the
   book more interesting.

   Some Negatives. This book has become somewhat outdated, written in 1998,
   with an intro by Marc Andreesen and a CDROM containing JDK 1.1! There are better
   books on Enterprise Java Beans. A new edition of this book could be thinner
   by reducing the EJB material. Its missing coverage of the new CORBA Component Model
   (of course, CCM was not out in 1998).

   In summary, I highly recommend this book for readers wanting to learn Client/Server

   programming and CORBA (using Java). I bought many copies of this book over the years
   for training people at my company.




5. This book is more suitable for beginners that want an insight to the jargon-laden world of Java middleware.

   CORBA is a powerful and complex method for distributed computing. This book does not go in depth into how to make use CORBA in practice. It gives a fairly shallow overview that frustratingly does not have much substance. It reminded me of an academic lecture I attended where I was positive that the lecturer did not have practical experience in the subject - and gave a theoretical discussion on the subject. This is fine as an introduction but frustrating if one wants to get over the theoretical summary of the concepts and work on what (and if) it works; and under what circumstances!

   BUT this book is very useful to beginners that would like the 50K feet view first and then go elsewhere to drill for more information.

   Another point to keep in mind is that this book was originally published in 1998 - some of the book's information is presently irrelevant. I am not sure if there was a reprint since 1998 but the information included is dated.

   In conclusion, buy this book if you are a beginner and would like a reference guide.

   Hope this is helpful!!

4 comments about J2ME Games With MIDP2.

1. Recently, on buses and trains, I've noticed people using cellphones to play games. On these dinky little screens, with a keypad instead of a keyboard, and with tinny audio. But even having all these constraints, such games have their attraction.

   This should be the draw to you, to program one of these mobile devices. If the hardware runs Java, then, as Hamer explains, J2ME is used. She describes how Sun stripped out a lot of Java classes, to arrive at a minimal subset that is aware of the severe constraints you face. Limited power. Small screen. Small memory. Intermittant and low bandwidth. No mouse. No keyboard. Get the picture?

   Yet even under all these limitations, Hamer shows how you can use J2ME and version 2 of MIDP to construct cool games. In many ways, it is harder than writing for a desktop or laptop or game console. But the best attitude is to regard this as a challenge of your ingenuity. Perhaps using this book, you will be the author of the next Tetris.

   I'm only half joking when I say this. Because there is something about this field that I don't think Hamer explicitly points out. If you go through the book, you should come to the conclusion that you can code an entire game by yourself. Realistically, this is no longer true for games on the other platforms. These are now storyboarded and written by a team of programmers, with often a million dollar budget. With J2ME and this book, you can still do it all.




2. I really enjoyed this book. The author does a solid job of explaining everything you need to know to write games for MIDP devices. If you are familiar with Jonathan Knudsen's book on J2ME (probably the best book on the subject), this book expands the single games chapter into a fun and interesting book.
   
   The book starts with a quick sample showing us how to use the Sun IDE and how to run our games on the emulator and how to download our games to a phone. The author shows a couple of example games, a maze and a jumping game, that give a good overview of the basic techniques games use on MIDP devices. She then expands those examples by showing proper use of threads and shows how to play tones and music during a game. Storing information (such as high scores or user preferences) is demonstrated. Downloading game enhancements such as new levels for a dungeon game are also demonstrated. The book is full of well-commented code samples (worth stealing) that show the techniques being discussed.
   
   The author of this book has a nice, easy to read style of writing. Her enthusiasm for the topic comes through and makes you want to try the many sample games. If you have been spending too much time on enterprise programming then playing around with some MIDP games might be just the antidote and this book will get you started on the fun.



3. This the the right title for this book. It is basically a review of the code of a few simple games (like a cowboy jumping tumbleweeds, or a simple 2d maze) with very little space devoted to theory and explanations.. both of the APIs and of the internal logic and algorithms. Not that this book isn't useful.. it is but you have to wade through a lot of code, and I think the author could have done a much better job if for example she had taken the time to EXPLAIN the maze generation algorithms instead of just saying "look at the code". In short, more time and effort on the author's side, less on the reader.. and I think this book was written in very little time and with very little effort.



4. I really wanted to like this book, but it turned out to be just a collection of very long code fragments with no annotation and little explanation. There is a great topic here, and there are some good ideas, but the knowledge is locked in the code.
   
   If you are the type of person that learns by reading code then you will already have learned the APIs by looking at the sample code. The reason we buy technical books is to teach us how to use the APIs through a combination of well annotated example code, well organized reference material for the APIs, and illustrations that demonstrate best practice code flow. This book only has the code and a little explanation, the reference material, and effective illustrations are missing.
   
   I recommend this book only if you can't find any other material on MIDP2.

No comments about Learn JavaScript In a Weekend, Second Edition (In a Weekend).

No comments about Rea Quick Access Java 2 Certification.

5 comments about Tapestry in Action (In Action series).

1. This book describes Tapestry 3, while Tapestry 4 will be hopefully released soon, in some aspects quite different from it's predecessor. But still, I would recommend this book to everyone who is going to use Tapestry and who wants to understand the framework. Because Howard, being the creator of Tapestry, shows the main ideas and principles around which the framework was built, and the most important of them do not change with a next release. They only become more efficiently expressed.
   
   Having said that, I should warn that this isn't the best book for the complete Tapestry beginners. In a number of cases the author tries to speak at a beginner's level, but he obviously knows too much :) and cares too much for this.
   
   However, there is a number of Tapestry tutorials available in the Web, and having started with them, you will definitely want to read this book.



2. this book is not well written. Tapestry is a new way of developing web applications and the author glance through way too many concepts that are essential to understand tapestry web development. For instance, OGNL is havily used by tapestry, but the author does not even bother to spend a little time explaining how it's been used by tapestry. I was left with a lot more questions on tapestry after reading this book. This book only serves as an introduction to tapestry and lacks full coverage. If you buy this book, you will have to spend a lot of time researching the net to find answers to basic question that (I think) should have been addressed by the book. Especially since the author is also the lead developer of Tapestry.
   
   Also be aware that this book only covers Tapestry 3.0 and not 4.0



3. I am learning Tapestry to use it in a project. True the learning curve is high, but with this book you not only learned how to use Tapestry but also the why's and how's behind its design. Chapter 7 (under the hood) and 10 (Implementing a sample application) are particularly good. In all a very dense and clear book suitable for intermediate to advanced readers.



4. The book seems to be well written and very fine IF AND ONLY IF you are using version 3 and have no plans to upgrade any time soon. If you are using version 4 or plan to any time soon, trying to follow along with this book will send you on a series of wild-goose chases trying to figure out why none of the examples work. Instead I recommend Kent Tong's book, which has been revised to reflect Tapestry 4.
   
   All of the sample code and concepts are based on version 3, and I could not get a single example to work (e.g., the Authentication example relies on the Visit class, which is deprecated. The banner ad example relies on the AbstractService class, which is gone in version 4 - the upgrade guide says simply "that class has been removed so you will have significant rewrites." Not exactly helpful in the "how to" department.)



5. This books is just no longer relevant. Even when it was relevant (back in 2004), it was not a good way to start learning Tapestry. I would have preferred more barebones examples, rather than jumbling a bunch of stuff into a kitchen-sink "workbench".
   
   There is no Manning book for Tapestry 4.x, which for a long while was the way to go. "Enjoying Web Development with Tapestry" is a good book, which is like set of heavy duty tutorials with mini-evolutions of the project during the chapter. It happens to mimic the way I learn things.
   
   Now, Tapestry 5 is on the horizon, and it looks really good so far. Hopefully someone will release a book for entry-level Tapestry adopters, especially since Tapestry 5 is radically different than/incompatible with version 3 or 4.
   
   The Tapestry mailing list is the best replacement for this book. You may also want to search the net for a free book on Apache Maven, which is the preferred method of building applications that use developmental versions of Tapestry 5.

5 comments about Professional IBM WebSphere 5.0 Application Server (Programmer to Programmer).

1. This book has been a huge disappointment. Wrox books had the
   habit of being no BS, clear, hands-on, detailed techical tutorials.. and this is why they had their original success. But now, perhaps in conjunction with being bought by Wiley, Wrox is definitely going down. The authors of this book souns like IBM managers, not certainly programmers. The first chapters do not contain ANY techical info but just advertising for IBM products (I am not making this up..!)
   The rest of the presentation is a confused, disorderly, bloated,
   verbose, unnecessarily complicated sequence of "click here and then click there" instructions. If you have some brains this book will be unbearable, if you have none, well you're probably one of the authors.
   What is most irritating and annoying about this book is the pompous, monotonous, slow tone aimed at passing straightforward
   technical notions for rocket science, which unfortunately seems to be a general trend at IBM.



2. This may be a little premature as I'm only 100 pages in but, it's extremely refreshing to see a very thorough treatment of a J2EE focused product - that is rare to me. J2EE is not rocket science but, it is also not trivial as evidenced by the lack of good readable documention on the subject - despite J2EE ubiquity.

   The authors are obviously extremely knowledgable about their product (WS and WSAD) and they patiently communicate it in an articulate manner that make learning this stuff as easy as it could be.

   If you want something more concise and thoroughly difficult to learn from, go read the Sun J2EE specs, their fun... and their free and they mostly apply to WS.

   I've never liked a book written by 6 people. Usually the compliation reminds me more of a pile of ... e.g. just a hack. This book appears to be the exception. You really gain an appreciation and an understanding of the elegance of the functionality of the WS and WSAD products.

   I was a JDeveloper/9iAS bigot until this book and some experience with the WSAD/WS products.

   The only 2 problems I see with WAS 5.1 (that's the version I'm currently working with) is that it's a step behind the competition (i.e. J2EE 1.3 versus 1.4) and that some of the WSAD wizards are mediocre but, that's not the books problem.

   Thanks for the good job. Keep up the good work.




3. It is very hard to follow the example that is covered in various chapters.
   The optimization and tuning the server is hardly there.



4. I paid OVER $80 for this book (dumb me, I know...) hoping I could get a version of WebSphere that might work with some sample applications but I was apparently asking too much. I go through the entire 30 minute installation process from both CDs
   and then when I start WSAD 5.0 I get the helpful error message
   telling me that 'The license cannot be found. IBM Websphere Studio application developer version 5.0.0 cannot start'. Well,
   THANKS A LOT IBM - taking a lesson from the Microsoft playbook?

   And OF COURSE there is no reference to this problem in the book or on the WROX website though there at least 20 license.* files installed with WSAD, none of which have anything to do with an actual license that can be read by WSAD when it starts. I'm taking the book back and hope I can get refund so I don't have to spend a day trying to figure this mess out. Thank God for WebLogic....




5. I found this book great. The examples were concise. The font was wonderful. Who knew J2EE could be so much fun?!?! (And those handsome dudes on the front sure don't hurt either.) 3 thumbs up