Introduction to Java Programming, Comprehensive Version

I am learning java on my own. I have tried few books before with varying degrees of satisfaction. This book by Dr. Liang really help me to understand the basics. The topics are explained in concise manner with help of numerous illustration. It is indeed true that a picture worth thousands of words. In addition, I appreciate the author provides solutions to almost all review questions on website. This is really useful for me to check my answers and learn from it. It is in contrast to some of the books whereby the answers is treated like a 'secret' to you. There is also supplementary materials like online quiz on the author's website.

If you prefer your computer technology learning in textbook style, then this is an excellent choice in books... Introduction to Java Programming - Comprehensive Version (Sixth Edition) by Y. Daniel Liang. It's an entire college-level course in Java in one very big (and well-written) volume... Contents: Part 1 - Fundamentals of Programming: Introduction to Computers, Programs, and Java; Primitive Data Types and Operations; Selection Statements; Loops; Methods; Arrays Part 2 - Object-Oriented Programming: Objects and Classes; Strings and Text I/O; Inheritance and Polymorphism; Abstract Classes and Interfaces; Object-Oriented Design Part 3 - GUI Programming: Getting Started with GUI Programming; Graphics; Event-Driven Programming; Creating User Interfaces; Applets and Multimedia Part 4 - Exception Handling, I/O, and Recursion: Exceptions and Assertions; Binary I/O; Recursion Part 5 - Data Structures: Lists, Stacks, Queues, Trees, and Heaps; Generics; Java Collections Framework, Algorithm Efficiency and Sorting Part 6 - Concurrency, Networking, and Internationalization: Multithreading; Networking; Internationalization Part 7 - Advanced GUI Programming: JavaBeans and Bean Events; Containers, Layout Managers, and Borders; Menus, Toolbars, Dialogs, and Internal Frames; MVC and Swing Models; JTable and JTree Part 8 - Web Programming: Java Database Programming; Advanced Java Database Programming; Servlets; JavaServer Pages; Remote Method Invocation Appendixes: Java Keywords; The ASCII Character Set; Operator Precedence Chart; Java Modifiers; Special Floating-Point Values; Bit Operations Index At over 1300 pages, you'd expect there to be quite a bit of material covering a wide range of topics. And you'd be right... Liang has written a textbook on Java, and it's one textbook that I'd probably buy even if I wasn't enrolled in a class. As you can tell from the contents, everything from the very basics of the language (like primitives) to highly advanced topics (like RMI) are covered in at least some level of detail. Once you get done working through the material (or the semester ends, whichever comes first), you should have a complete understanding of Java. From that point, you'll simply need experience. Each chapter is laid out with objectives, the material, quite often a case study that ties together everything in the chapter, a summary, review questions, and programming exercises. There's even an entire website devoted to supporting instructors that are using this book as their course reference. One thing I noticed about this book is that early on they start using Swing examples to show programming examples using a visual interface. Most Java books have historically used command line programs to teach the language. It's an acceptable method, but it tends to make the use of GUI features something to be learned separately. Since there's a mixture of command line and graphical examples from the beginning, the mental divide between the two types

I actually didnt learn Java using this book. I used another book that the university prescribed. Although that was just introductory level, as i moved on to more advanced java programming, the need to understand JSP, the java.net api etc... I looked to books that would explain it well. Most java books out there at the advanced level assume that you have much programming experience and know a few other langauges. Thus they skip out a lot of important details that would otherwise be helpful to beginners and possibly even a good revision for experts. This book had it all. It was perfect. After going through many books, I can safely say that any java problem i come across I look to this book first. In fact I liked it so much for these advanced chapters that I decided to read through the whole thing, even the introductory chapters, just to see if i missed out anything while learning java. All I can say is I wish i had this book while beginning to learn java. A true beginner to expert book. Not just for Java, but programming in general. A must read!

There are too many Java programming books where the author just can't wait to get the student into Java API'S, Javadoc documentation, IDE's, GUI's, and so on. This is unfortunate because it does not prepare the student for the fundamentals of programming (understanding loops, arrays, methods, and so on) that you have to know prior to being able to manipulate the Java API's to produce "real-world" applications. This book provides excellent preparation for those students willing to work hard - the exercises are tremendously effective in forcing you to think not only about why your proposed solution works but why it doesn't work.

I loved how the author used diagrams and step-by-step code snippets with plenty of annotation leading to the full code. Sounds like any other good java book out there, but for some reason the reading was smooth and logical. His use of class diagrams helps the reader not get lost in the maze of classes and packages. I loved the Java I/O chapter. Thourough and clear treatment! This book contains rich, color illustrations. The book uses high quality paper which gave the book a heavy feel.