Java Book, are any of these good?? Help please, buying one today.

[911paramedic]

I did a search but found nothing about books, so if there was a post already, my bad.

I am going to pick up a book this afternoon and was wondering if any of THESE were good. If you know of a good book I would love to hear about it.

Thanks.

 

[Electric Amish]

#6 Core Java 2, Volume 1: Fundamentals

That's the text we used for my Java class. I liked it.

amish

 

[Descartes]

Of course it depends on your background, I'd say Thinking in Java is your best bet. I thought it was a great book, but I would also say it assumes a solid knowledge foundation. It can also be downloaded here for free.

 

[loup garou]

I used this one in my class, and it was terrible (as was my professor :|). I've always found Wrox books to be excellent for other languages, I bet this one would be good, although I've never actually used it.

 

[911paramedic]

<< I used this one in my class, and it was terrible (as was my professor :|). I've always found Wrox books to be excellent for other languages, I bet this one would be good, although I've never actually used it. >>



The first book you said was terrible got this review:

Dan Spurling (danspurling@iwon.com), a 32 year old programming student, September 22, 2000,
STOP!!
I am a beginner with the Java language. This is the first book I have used in trying to understand Java and it has provided me with more frustration than I have dealt with in years. I would definately NOT recommend purchasing this book as a learning tool. It is written very choppy, gives poor examples, does not explain things very well at all and causes confusion beyond belief. The only reason I rated this book as high as 1-star is because they didn't offer a 0.

Sounds like you were right.

 

[manly]

I concur w/ Descarte's Thinking in Java recommendation. It covers many of the standard Java libraries; you can ignore later topics that you don't yet need (i.e. RMI). My only complaint was that the code is overly tedious is some parts, but you can skip past those (i.e. I don't need to know how *all* of the fundamental operators works).

I'm not a fan of Deitel and Deitel, at least not their C++ book, although a lot of CS departments use their work and apparently a lot of students like it.

 

[Sestar]

Wrox? You mean those people with over 12 people on the cover of some of their books? HAHA! Read Core Java, First fundamentals, then advanced, its a great series, and is very readable .

 

[loup garou]

<< Wrox? You mean those people with over 12 people on the cover of some of their books? HAHA! Read Core Java, First fundamentals, then advanced, its a great series, and is very readable . >>


Hey, there's only ONE guy on the Wrox Java book. But I know what you mean. My PHP book had like 8 people in on it.

 

[dOrKuS]

I thought number 34 was a great book. Had to use it in one of my classes

 

[Supermercado]

We used the UNIX in a Nutshell book this semester and I found it to be a pretty handy reference guide and my Computer Science teacher kept insisting that all of the "Nutshell" books were good. Not sure how they would be for actually learning the material, but as a reference, I would imagine they're pretty good.

 

[StageLeft]

I have professional ASP 3.0 next to me and it has 15 people on the front cover. I like Wrox books though - their SQL 7 and 2000 books have just one guy. Basically the same picture except in the 2000 edition he has glasses on

 

[LordJezo]

Get the second one listed there. The one by Ivor Horton. His books are amazing.5

 

[911paramedic]

Thanks for all the help. I ended up ordering these from Amazon:

Core Java 2, Volume 1: Fundamentals by Cay S. Horstmann, Gary Cornell
Core Java 2, Volume 2 by Cay S. Horstmann, Gary Cornell and
Core Servlets and JavaServer Pages (JSP) by Marty Hall

They were grouped together for ~$90 so I went ahead and bought all three. Those should keep me busy for a while.


(I went to buy the first book at Barnes and Noble but they wanted full price ($45) for it, they would not match their own online price. I said "Thank you very much" and went on my way.)