Programming.Java

This book doesn't have the greatest reviews and I think it's because it has the wrong audience. I'm an old time Cobol programmer who's read some books on java but really had a hard time sitting down and getting a program organized and working. This book solved my problems. Between the hands on lablets and the numerous problems in the quiz section at the end of each chapter I finally began to be able to use what I knew. Also there's a fabulous chapter in which the authors actually build an application from scratch, explaining their thinking and ackowledging the time it takes to get it up and running. This book is for people who want to be able to use java when they're done but I think it's too hard for total novices. It would have been nice however if there were solutions to some of the problems.

This book works much better when used in conjunction with a lab manual. I have used this book successfully in teaching a beginnning Java course to non-computer science students. The approach is non-traditional in the sense that the students start programming a graphical user interface from the very beginning. This approach engages the students and helps them learn more quickly because they can "see" the effects of the changes they make to their code.The authors take a top-down approach and avoid overwhelming students with too many details.

I just finished a class which was taught with this book, and I know more about Java than I ever wanted to. I think that the book was extremely well written, and was presented in an extremely easy to learn format. If you are interested in programming using Java, I would advise reading this book.