Java Book

[zero-impact]

So I have decided to use Java as my next language alongside Turing. My school does not teach Java so I have chosen to buy a book.
I picked up Head First Java (A Brain-Friendly Guide) 2nd edition
Has anyone heard of / read this book?
is it any good?

[McKenzie]

I like the series, although I don't own that one.

[nike52]

It has alot of good reviews on amazon. If you want to know about the bad things, read the reviews that give low ratings.

To recommend another one, try Java How to Program Edition 6. It's beginner friendly, very nice, I'm learning from it.

[Nick]

my teacher has programming Java for dummies, the java textbook for the class that isn't used, and begginer game programming in java

[syntax_error]

I personally think the tuts here are good enough to learn; esp. wtd beginners guide to java, imo its filled with stuff and very nicely, and clearly explained.

[Tony]

zero-impact @ Wed Mar 26, 2008 8:36 pm wrote:

So I have decided to use Java as my next language alongside Turing.

I think some people here would be interested in knowing as to how you came to that decision... especially considering that it is not even used in your school.

[syntax_error]

tony trying to push ruby again?

not a bad thing although.

[Tony]

not Ruby in particular. Just want to know why Java over anything else.

[zero-impact]

Well my school teaches Turing and VB 6.
I expressed my interest in learning a new language to a family friend who works at Microsoft. He recommended learning Java, or C#. He said "they have good data structures and types built in and generally don't crash mysteriously if you make a mistake.". He also said to progress from their to a language such as C or C++ "learn as many languages as you can".

[wtd]

They have a lot of types, and a lot of data structures. Not sure if that translates to "good" though.

I am of the opinion that it indicates a lack of something fundamental that would make much of that code redundant.

[r691175002]

I like Java for a lot of reasons and think that it is a language that is very beneficial to play around with because of its strong object orientation.

Java was the language that made OOP really click for me. Before then I could pop out definitions and common use cases, but after Java I understood where I could save work by using it and had a different approach to planning out projects. I am convinced that language like C++ (Which hits me as having OOP tacked on after the fact) would not be as effective for learning OOP.

While Java can be a bit verbose (Anonymous classes for events are disgusting) it is still my favorite language by far because the design makes a lot of sense to me and the set of libraries is incredible.

On top of that, Java has some of the best online documentation I have seen in a language. For every class there is an online javadoc such as (http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/api/java/lang/System.html) which is very informative, and on top of that, almost every API has a set of tutorials and sample code (http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/uiswing/). To top it all off, IDEs such as Eclipse integrate seamlessly with the online javadocs for tooltips, help files and auto completion.

Learning a language will never hurt you, and I consider Java to be one of the better languages. I suggest taking a look at some of Java's online tutorials first and see how much you like it. I have taken a few Java books out from the library (Best way to learn a language is to take out every book on it and read the ones that seem good) and none really stood out. I find that very few books are worth reading more than once or twice.

[Tony]

Java might have a strong objet orientation (though not full) but it's also strongly typed. I suppose there's a certain level of "security" involved with that, but it makes the language much less flexible, much more verbose, and all around more frustrating.

Although it does have a lot of documentation.