Java for Engineers and Scientists

Great book. Good content. Clear style. Excellent introduction to programming in Java. Wide variety of topics covered in a modest amount of pages.

This book begins by showing how to implement procedural algorithms in Java. The early examples are short and understandable by those familiar with C or fortran. The commenting style is clean and concise. I have found the object-oriented portions to also be very helpful and I plan to spend more time with these sections. At first glance the emphasis seems to be on plotting data. A medium-sized scientific simulation example incorporating multiple related classes would be a great way to illustrate the design and programming suggestions made by the author. I was UNABLE to access the book's web site (www.prenhall.com/author_chapman/) or find any links to the plotting package. Overall, this was a great book for where I am on the learning curve. I would like to see how it all comes together for a more complex physical simulation.

Chapman's book is excellent for the beginner java programmer. The convenience classes he provides ensures that novices don't get bogged down with the complex java io system just to write simple programs. (IO is covered later on in the book). At the same time he covers quite a wide range of topics. I found his approach to object oriented design, java 2D graphics, and GUI programming using swing particularly well written and easy to follow. I would definitely reccommend this book to any beginner wanting to learn java.

If you are a beginning Java student, or a scientist or engineer new to Java, buy this book! After choosing Java to solve a scientific problem, I have reviewed several Java texts. Chapman's Java for engineers and scientists is, I report enthusiastically, the best Java text I have run across. During a recent Colorado ski holiday with my family, I could not put this book down.The popular Deitel swing text and several others take a fairly complex subject and make it completely unintelligible to the beginning Java programmer. Chapman's text, on the other hand, is well organized and well written. Concepts are presented in a logical sequence that builds constructively. The shortcoming, and perhaps advantage, of this and all beginning texts is the use of packages that simplify io and graphics for the beginner. The book also has the usual editing errors that are very minor. This is a good place to start for the beginner. After you have finished the book and done some of the exercises you are ready to tackle your own problems, or even the Deitel text.

This book does a good job of introducing Java to the totalbeginner - it will get you started and get you to write functionalprograms. The style is clear, easy to follow. It does clearly point out the several sources of numerical errors which one encounters - which is often skipped by other introductory books. Another positive point is that it provides a quick way to program decent-looking graphs. It does so by providing pre-packaged code - allowing the reader to concentrate on the algorithms.Don't expect this book to teach you all there is to Java - it will get you going and help you deal with more comprehensive books! END