No comments about Maximizing Web Dynpro for Java.

5 comments about Java Bible.

1. There must be better books out there on learning Java! Many mistakes in code samples and descriptions. I feel ripped off.



2. no question -- this is simply the *worst* technical book i've ever purchased. *LOADED* with errors -- to the point that i find myself reading solely to find and ridicule them. any simplistic concept is covered adnauseam with continual "cute" jokes/quips thrown in while anything not immediatly obvious is glossed over. simply incredible they could waste over 1000 pages saying essentially nothing. my first "bible" book. there won't be a second



3. In a Java course I took the instructor recommended this book. I think it is not a good reference book. It just lumps everything together and is void of good examples or explanations. If you are new to Java, DO NOT use this book!!!



4. Much of the "coverage" consists of listings of properties and methods. Explanation and examples of how to use the information would be much more useful! In addition, the book is plagued with typos. This book is so bad it makes me hesitate to even consider a book from the same publisher.



5. I wish I'd read some of the other reviews posted here before buying the book. I even had many problems installing the CD-rom that came with the book; Arrrrrrrrghhhh..... I'm so annoyed... Please no one else buy this book. It's no good.

5 comments about Tomcat 5 Unleashed.

1. I took a while to study the books about the Tomcat server and finally settled on this one. When I got into it, it was better than I thought it would be. If you want to learn how to work with Tomcat 5 (there's also good information on Tomcat 4), this is the one. It takes a pragmatic and practical approach and covers every topic you need to implement a production Tomcat server. I have no criticisms of this book and no regrets for having ordered it.



2. writer uses very close reader relationship approach and book reading flows like butter,
   it creates a nice context alongside to make learning of tomcat less dry and more realistic
   good job



3. This is a great introduction - very clear, very easy to read! My goal was to configure already installed tomcat for a new domain in a very short period of time. This is the second book I tried to read on Tomcat - and in contrast with the first one (I spent 3 hours on one chapter because it just did not sink in), this is very easy to udnerstand for a beginner.
   This book does not only go into how to do something, it also explains "why," so you can begin to understand the basic principles of Tomcat set up and quickly catch on.



4. There are quite a few Tomcat books. This is, easily, the best I found so far. Since Tomcat is the servlet container of choice at our shop, I ordered every book I could find on Tomcat.
   
   Basically, Lajos Moczar writes with a lot of passion about best practices. And, they happen to be opinions that I mostly agree with and enforce!



5. After a useful chapter 1 "Quickstart", the text plunges quickly into mind-boggling complexity, including lengthy initial "Security basics", philosophic "Overview of JEE application development", "Web application principles", "Web application design", and a do-it-my-way "Setting up a development environment" chapters. Do we have to have Ant and MySQL installation at the start? Finally, chapters 9 and 10 are helpful for those who either persevered or skipped ahead.
   
   Publishers should require better writing skills from their authors and "cut-the-crap".

5 comments about Professional Symbian Programming: Mobile Solutions on the EPOC Platform.

1. I am not a computer programmer, but I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book (occasionally skimming). The first 50 pages, in particular, were an outstanding history of Psion & Epoc. A great read, reminding me of the documentary film Triumph of the Nerds (on the advent of the personal computer).



2. My company is working on software for the handset manufactures that are using the Symbian OS. We will now most likely miss our deadlines due to a very buggy OS and the worst documentation I have ever seen in 20 years of being in the industry. This book couldn't be more scatter-brained if they tried. There are some great bits and pieces here and there, but you have to find them. The worst part about this book is the fact that this is the only one there is. The handset manufacture is even reconsidering taking Symbian off their handsets all together. These guys better get their act together.



3. 1000 pages of un-user friendly material. Programming for the symbian platform is difficult at the best of times and the supporting material on the website only hinders experienced developers (I have over 10 years C and C++) experience. Some of the material is now out of date and SDK documentation is more helpful for development.Poor documentation is hampering our development efforts. Wireless Java for Symbian Devices is interesting but the Java implementation on Symbian EPOC is terrible.



4. I recommend this book to anybody who's interested in Symbian development. It's a very thorough material, you can not only begin to deal with EPOC with the help of this book, but get useful help when you're a professional. Though some information is a little bit outdated, it's still the best book I've ever read about Symbian OS.



5. There are only a handful of Symbian books available yet, and this one is the best of them. It is not a tutorial but a fairly good reference. It does a good job of explaining concepts as well, for instance I really like the discussion of descriptors in chapter 5.

   Those who have no Symbian background will find this book difficult (not because the book is badly written, but because Symbian is a very different platform). I recommend that beginners read documentation and whitepapers available at Symbian's website, take an introductory class and then buy this book for reference. Dont try to learn Symbian programming from this book. You'll be disappointed.

   I also think that the authors should revisit and work on a new edition of this useful book. There has been an addition of many new topics since R5, that require good reference material - authors could do the Symbian community a favor by providing that much needed reference material.

   This book deserves 3.5 stars now - and if the authors release a new edition, it will get 5 stars from me.

No comments about Professional Android Application Development.

5 comments about Java for the COBOL Programmer (SIGS: Advances in Object Technology).

1. The authors did a fantastic job of explaining similarities and differences between COBOL and JAVA, and even did a decent job of providing a good intro to object-oriented design. The examples, while being simple, are nonetheless well conceived and can easily be related to. I would unconditionally recommend this book to anybody trying to transition from COBOL to JAVA . . . except . . . it's out of date. It's based on the old JAVA 1.1, and there were major changes going to JAVA 1.2 (SWING being the biggy), and we're up to JAVA 1.3 now. Either get another book that's more current or wait for the next edition of this one.



2. I have programmed in COBOL and other 'mainframe' languages for almost 30 years. I have also done some programming on PC's in Access, Visual Basic, FoxPro and Visual FoxPro. About one year ago I became interested in JAVA. I then began to search for a book that did not require you to have C++ experience (which I do not have). Then, one night when I was checking out JAVA books on Amazon, I stumbled over 'JAVA for the COBOL Programmer'. I read the reviews and I decided to purchase it. This book is fantastic. It is extremely easy to read, it explains things very clearly, it constantly gives you examples of the COBOL equalivant, and it does an excellent job of defining all of those crazy JAVA terms. JAVA is very large and complicated, so you will not be a JAVA expert after reading this book, but you will be much better informed about it. I recommend this book to any COBOL programmer that wants to learn JAVA.



3. The only thing I know is that the author, E. Reed Doke is a pretty poor JAVA teacher, so I don't know how he can explain it in a book.



4. A couple of thoughts, while I'm 2/3 through the book:
   - Fully grasping chapters 2 & 3 is essential. I found that simply reading them resulted in little retained info. Going back through them, making detailed notes, took only one afernoon and it really stuck. ymmv

   - Chapter 3 - the intro to Java - contains the fewest COB concepts and code equivalents. I thought it would be interesting to express the class program example as a called COBOL program (they sort of half did it). That example would mentally connect directly and remove some 'mystery' from this whole class business.

   - the chapters on conditional processing, maths, etc show direct relationship to COB syntax.

   - the book comes with a CD with Symantec's Visual Cafe. Be aware - this is a 30 day trial.

   - Not covered in the book (unless it's at the end :) is the whole topic of the JDK and how to compile / run programs. Some other resource is needed in order to exercise the sample code.




5. After reading the first chapter, I was looking forward to the rest of the book thinking that for once, I was going to see authors not insult mainframe COBOL programmer's intelligence. Then the book falls apart. There are examples that don't work, misinformation (both found in Chapter 4) and confusing coding examples with little explanation of how it all hangs together. Don't waste your money on this volume.

No comments about Raven: Scripting Java Builds with Ruby.

5 comments about Modern Multithreading : Implementing, Testing, and Debugging Multithreaded Java and C++/Pthreads/Win32 Programs.

1. I think it was a pretty decent writing but certain parts can be hard to follow and i thought a combination of code + graphics would make it an even better read



2. This book is simply excellent. I have already completed my bachelors degree in Computer Science, which means I only had a basic understanding of threading from my Distributed Computing class. So, I knew a whole bunch of thread jargon and slightly understood how threads are created and what the critical section problem is, as well as a basic understanding of how semaphores can solve the problem. Beyond that, the book has taught me what goes on behind the scenes of thread creation and why critical sections can be so complicated. The average Computer Science student is not interested in how it works behind the scenes, only how to make it work for their current needs. This book, while useful to a more adept coder, will not quickly and easily fulfill that requirement. It is definitely geared toward those that are really serious about multithreading and intend to test/use their threading knowledge over and over again. If that is you and you don't really understand threading too well, this book can take you from novice to expert in only a few months.
   
   I'd definitely recommend it to my co-workers!



3. this book is awesome and also very clear to understand, it help you fix very common mistakes with real life examples. all the code is focused on a common classes between C++/java, the only cons is this book don't use linux pthreads instead use win32 version of pthreads so be carefull because the examples on their website won't compile in linux without adjustment.



4. As a Java engineer, I cannot really recommend this book. While the authors are definitely knowledgeable about their subject, they do not do a good job in communicating their knowledge to a reader. The book reads like a doctoral thesis, poorly organized, not well laid out. Brian Goetz book on Concurrency is a much better book.



5. Even though title suggests it is 'modern multithreading', this book reiterates typical multithreading issues. However subjects addressed are not presented well enough and code snippets are not explained properly.

2 comments about Digital Image Processing: A Practical Introduction Using Java (With CD-ROM).

1. This book introduces some basic concepts of image processing. It also uses Java 2D imaging functions to implement those concepts. Therefore, it is a practical book combined with concept and implementations.



2. In general terms, this is a good book for intermediate and advanced Java programmers who need to work with images.

   Just as the title reads, this is a Practical Introduction to digital image processing (DIP), that is, you will not find all the theory here, and the study of images will be mostly practical: with programs, what would be a good point or not, depending on you.

   The CD is a very nice complement for the book, but a couple of programs just don't run as expected, and you might want to check the code to find the error or to use the code just as a reference to write your own Java classes. I have checked just part of the code and the problems do not seem a matter of deprecated classes or the like. You can find some errata searching in the Internet, but not much at time of this writing (June 2002).

   You must read the book in front of your computer, to run the classes. The book sometimes doesn't tell you all about the classes available in the CD.

   Always remember, the book tries to teach you DIP *using* Java, not DIP *and* Java. If you are not confident of your level of Java, try another book first. If you know about DIP and want to study further, try a book that is more specific on such subject.

   This book is NOT for you if
   - you are a beginner in Java
   - you need to study DIP exhaustively

   This book is for you if
   - you have experience programming in Java
   - you need basic and general concepts about DIP

5 comments about JNDI API Tutorial and Reference: Building Directory-Enabled Java(TM) Applications (Java Series).

1. I have gone through this book, and find that it lacks systematic detailed information on the Preparations section, before being able to attempt the examples in the book. In my opinion this is a very serious drawback, and can throw off readers new to JNDI. So, in essence this book can be further improved upon by the authors with due consideration to the initial preparedness and loading of seed data sections, to enable the readers who attempt the examples, a more fruitful and enjoyable experience.



2. After reading documentation of JNDI and Wrox's Java Server Programming book, I realized that I need a more detailed hands-on book. I downloaded Netscape Directory Server for NT and read its document. Unfortunately (or fortunately), I can make my java program work on JNDI, LDAP until I read THIS book. I am happy to find it on sun's website. Make comparison by yourself. It is really an excellent book on JNDI.



3. Having about a year or so experience with Java, I bought this book intending to use JNDI on a project. I was hoping for a clear, simple tutorial; instead I had to wrestle with setting up my environment for at least two hours before I could even run one sample program. The authors do NOT clearly state which .JAR files have to go in jre/lib/ext, they do not explain that the path in the samples needs to be changed from /tmp/tutorial to whatever directory you are working in, and some of their examples are wrong (page 27 - the Lookup program does NOT take a command-line argument). I haven't started the Directory Operations chapter yet (since it requires an LDAP server and I haven't installed one yet), but if it took this long just to get through the basics, I have a feeling I'm going to be spending a lot of time reading Sun's forums looking for answers...



4. I heard the material was the same, but was hoping for a more thoughtful layout and more of a teaching perspective. No such luck.



5. This book is basically the same thing as on the sun website. It came without a cd although the authors mentioned a cd in the book for source code lookup.I have the impression the book was out of print because of the already mentioned cd issue and the fact that amazon had to wait for long time to get this book from the publishing warehouse(This is the reason amazon gave me for delaying the shipping)
   This book is half tutorial(0-396) half API(397-756) with some bonuses like LDAP schemas.