Java is the language du jour, and plenty of books have been written about it. But with so many books available, new offerings should be something special. This one isn't. Learning Java starts at the beginning with a "hello world"-style program that demonstrates using Sun's Java tools. Throughout, the book introduces features using examples--all thoroughly discussed and explained in as straightforward and jargon-free a manner as practicable. A tricky aspect of Java is the way classes are related, so it's neat to see a whole chapter devoted to the subject early on. Even more opaque is the explicit use of threads. Again, this topic is made accessible in this text, especially with its discussion of thread synchronization. Basic graphics, video handling, and other media in Java are discussed, followed by Beans and the builder environment--but stopping short of JavaBeans. The book finishes with a section on applets, the Java plug-in, and digital signatures. Overall, however, the reader gets no feeling of working toward a goal, and perhaps this would have been a better book if a project had been its theme. Another odd decision in the mix here was to ignore the several--some free--Java IDEs generally used to program Java. (The book makes a point of saying it hasn't discussed them but doesn't explain. Even beginners find Java more accessible in a programming environment.) Still, Learning Java, which uses Java 2 v1.3, does a competent job of introducing the language to beginners. As with most O'Reilly books, it's authoritative, lucid, and well edited. Though this book may fail to inspire in the reader the presumed enthusiasm for Java felt by the authors, you won't go wrong with this one, and its coverage of object-oriented programming issues is particularly good. --Steve Patient, Amazon.co.ukVersion 5.0 of the Java 2 Standard Edition SDK is the most important upgrade since Java first appeared a decade ago. With Java 5.0, you'll not only find substantial changes in the platform, but to the language itself-something that developers of Java took five years to complete. The main goal of Java 5.0 is to make it easier for you to develop safe, powerful code, but none of these improvements makes Java any easier to learn, even if you've programmed with Java for years. And that means our bestselling hands-on tutorial takes on even greater significance. Learning Java is the most widely sought introduction to the programming language that's changed the way we think about computing. Our updated third edition takes an objective, no-nonsense approach to the new features in Java 5.0, some of which are drastically different from the way things were done in any previous versions. The most essential change is the addition of "generics", a feature that allows developers to write, test, and deploy code once, and then reuse the code again and again for different data types. The beauty of generics is that more problems will be caught during development, and Learning Java will show you exactly how it's done. Java 5.0 also adds more than 1,000 new classes to the Java library. That means 1,000 new things you can do without having to program it in yourself. That's a huge change. With our book's practical examples, you'll come up to speed quickly on this and other new features such as loops and threads. The new edition also includes an introduction to Eclipse, the open source IDE that is growing in popularity. Learning Java, 3rd Edition addresses all of the important uses of Java, such as web applications, servlets, and XML that are increasingly driving enterprise applications. The accompanying CD includes the Java 5.0 SDK for Windows, Linux and Solaris, plus the Eclipse IDE, the NetBeans IDE, and the many example programs from the book.
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