Customer Reviews:
 still relevant! November 24, 2003
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
As the blurb says, this book was written during teaching in '96. The book is still the core text of the 'Introduction to Programming' module at Durham University in '03, demonstrating just how suitable it is for learning programming from the ground up.The book is very well structured. If you want to learn concepts at basic level to start with, you can read the main chapters. If you need pragmatic advice on implementation, there is a tips section at the end of every chapter. Finally if you want a much more in-depth understanding of _why_ things are the way they are, each chapter also has a 'curios, controversies and cover-ups' section, explaining the reason why certain design decisions are made, alternatives and further reading. This book will teach you how to program, the object oriented paradigm _and_ java - each of which are seperate skills, the former two applicable to other languages and situations.
 Well worth buying! March 15, 2001
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I highly recommend this book to anyone beginning Java, especially if they are also new to programming.The technical content is accurately thought out, with enough code to deliver the message effectively. For example, Barry proposes a sound case for the use of interfaces, and demonstrates their use in some non-trivial examples. The book starts slowly, but patience is rewarded. Once the basics are grasped thoroughly you have enough confidence to quickly cover several more intermediate topics. Although this is an introductory text, it is broad enough to leave the reader with sufficient knowledge to tackle harder problems with the help of extra resources such as the Java API reference. Barry succeeds in explaining the why behind the how - I feel the book equips the reader with a knowledge of good programming practice as well as an understanding of the Java syntax, i.e. transferable skills which will be of benefit to languages other than Java.
a review from a student March 15, 2001
5 out of 15 found this review helpful
This is a gripping discourse on the fraught nature of life in the 21st century, as reflected through the innovative use of the metaphore that is the programming language java. Never before have I been so overwhelmed by emotion. Mere words can only grasp at the true depth and brilliance of this text.
This book taught me at university February 27, 2001
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
As a student that this book was on as a lecture course, I found it a great introduction to Java. The book has taught all the basics of the language that have built a good foundation to build upon. Help is given by a number of documented pieces of sample code, and there are plenty of exercises to help assist the learning (I had to do enough of them!) Only thing missing is variables called "foo" and "bar" and the "Hello World!" programme!!! The only thing I didn't like was the variable naming conventions where the name of a type is used with a single letter before it. OK, you know what type your variable is, but it can get confusing if you have multiple instances or can't remember what it does at a late stage in a piece of code. But still a worthwhile book for anyone wanting to learn Java.
|
