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Learning Java: A Bestselling Hands-On Java Tutorial
Java is the preferred language for many of today’s leading-edge technologies—everything from smartphones and game consoles to robots, massive enterprise systems, and supercomputers. If you’re new to Java, the fourth edition of this bestselling guide provides an example-driven introduction to the latest language features and APIs in Java 6 and 7. Advanced Java developers will be able to take a deep dive into areas such as concurrency and JVM enhancements.
You’ll learn powerful new ways to manage resources and exceptions in your applications, and quickly get up to speed on Java’s new concurrency utilities, and APIs for web services and XML. You’ll also find an updated tutorial on how to get started with the Eclipse IDE, and a brand-new introduction to database access in Java.
You’ll learn powerful new ways to manage resources and exceptions in your applications, and quickly get up to speed on Java’s new concurrency utilities, and APIs for web services and XML. You’ll also find an updated tutorial on how to get started with the Eclipse IDE, and a brand-new introduction to database access in Java.
1007 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 1996
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276 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
November 3, 2019
I wanted to love this book, but I just liked it. The book wasn't a bad read, but it didn't fit my needs.
September 14, 2019
Magnificent guide to any level developer. Doesn't matter if you have one motnh or twenty years development experience in any language. This book always has something to add yo your skills and your everyday writing style. Just read it, you won't lose.
August 3, 2018
I once said that it's not just the matter of wanting to learn something, there is also the matter of wanting to teach.
The problem here is that the book doesn't seem interested in the second.
I mean, sure, it's nice that you go through all the classes, but... is it necessary? Is this teaching? Not to me.
Either focus on how things work and how to pick things, but going over and over and over over everything is tiring and not helpful. Not to mention there is a lot of things said twice (or even more), which seems focused on making the book bigger, instead of making things clearer.
The problem here is that the book doesn't seem interested in the second.
I mean, sure, it's nice that you go through all the classes, but... is it necessary? Is this teaching? Not to me.
Either focus on how things work and how to pick things, but going over and over and over over everything is tiring and not helpful. Not to mention there is a lot of things said twice (or even more), which seems focused on making the book bigger, instead of making things clearer.
June 8, 2020
Ultimately this book needed a refactor. It covers topics in a surprising way (threads before strings?)
It also tries to be comprehensive which is near impossible for a print book with a language this large. The result is a hodgepodge of topics of different granularity leaving the reader without a good sense of their importance in the programming community.
It also tries to be comprehensive which is near impossible for a print book with a language this large. The result is a hodgepodge of topics of different granularity leaving the reader without a good sense of their importance in the programming community.
July 20, 2017
This is an excellent text. I learnt a lot about Java in the first 200 pages, but in the end I found reading about each library, without the seasoning of a real project, too much. So this is one book that I am marking as read that I have not literally read from cover to cover
December 8, 2023
Decent book for reference, especially if you are brand spanking new to Java. Content and exercises are a bit repetitive and don't add much after some time. Maybe check this one out from the library or borrow from a friend, rather than buying it.
August 27, 2014
Short version of what may turn into a longer review:
Overall a good introduction to the Java language and its standard library. I quipped throughout that the book was as verbose as the language, but this is a good-natured jab, especially considering that the authors have done an excellent job in organizing and presenting the material, and in showing good concrete examples.
The book itself covers Java through version 1.7. One of the things that I really appreciated about the text (and have seen mentioned in many other reviews) is that it is not a guide to basic syntax or computer programming fundamentals. There's an assumption coming in that you already know about variables and if statements and for loops etc. They're only talking about things that are specific to Java so as to help you learn idiomatic Java. They also build a really strong case for why Java is a "good" or "productive" language, taking the time to talk about its philosophy, the language design choices, and other underpinnings (e.g., JVM bytecode) -- helping one to understand the why of Java and not just the how. (There's also a pretty sweet glossary in the back to help you get through some of the language's more arcane keywords.)
What didn't I like? A couple things jump out:
(1) Better coverage of the JVM eco-system. I realize that the book is about Java (the language itself) and not "the JVM", and I realize that the book is already 1010 pages long but I could really have used a little more about "the JVM eco-system" and less about Swing. Again, I get it: Swing is part of the core Java platform, and things like Groovy and/or Tomcat are not but... still. I don't know anyone programming in Swing, and we got basically half a chapter on servlets. Maybe that's all it needs but it seems like the biggest part of Java these days is "JVM eco-system" and not "Java by itself".
(2) More on garbage collection. Maybe I'm expecting something too low-level here but we got about... 4 pages (?) worth of coverage on GC. And what we got was basically just an explanation of what GC is. I'm as in the dark as ever about the actual GC settings, Eden, Young and Perm gen, survivors, etc. And "heap" doesn't appear in the index at all?
So I guess... a few more things at the high-level? and a little bit more at the lowest-levels? The former is definitely an expectation on my part that the book doesn't even promise to fulfill, but would have been nice to see a bit more of (though it does have pointers to good resources); the latter just seems like the editor came through and said "let's not go there".
All in all? A worthwhile book for learning the language (if you already have a solid programming and/or CS foundation), and it provides a good layer of "why Java" on top of "how to Java", but expect to use it as a springboard for further learning depending on where your work Java actually takes you. I would recommend it to any competent developer that's looking to add Java to their toolkit.
----
PS - So. Much. Swing. 3 chapters... 148 pages of it. And plenty of references to it in the 2 chapters that follow. And then a chapter on applets. Who does this anymore?
PPS - JavaBeans chapter winds up feeling like tautology. ("The following bean class example is considered a bean because it follows the bean class paradigm." Yay!)
Overall a good introduction to the Java language and its standard library. I quipped throughout that the book was as verbose as the language, but this is a good-natured jab, especially considering that the authors have done an excellent job in organizing and presenting the material, and in showing good concrete examples.
The book itself covers Java through version 1.7. One of the things that I really appreciated about the text (and have seen mentioned in many other reviews) is that it is not a guide to basic syntax or computer programming fundamentals. There's an assumption coming in that you already know about variables and if statements and for loops etc. They're only talking about things that are specific to Java so as to help you learn idiomatic Java. They also build a really strong case for why Java is a "good" or "productive" language, taking the time to talk about its philosophy, the language design choices, and other underpinnings (e.g., JVM bytecode) -- helping one to understand the why of Java and not just the how. (There's also a pretty sweet glossary in the back to help you get through some of the language's more arcane keywords.)
What didn't I like? A couple things jump out:
(1) Better coverage of the JVM eco-system. I realize that the book is about Java (the language itself) and not "the JVM", and I realize that the book is already 1010 pages long but I could really have used a little more about "the JVM eco-system" and less about Swing. Again, I get it: Swing is part of the core Java platform, and things like Groovy and/or Tomcat are not but... still. I don't know anyone programming in Swing, and we got basically half a chapter on servlets. Maybe that's all it needs but it seems like the biggest part of Java these days is "JVM eco-system" and not "Java by itself".
(2) More on garbage collection. Maybe I'm expecting something too low-level here but we got about... 4 pages (?) worth of coverage on GC. And what we got was basically just an explanation of what GC is. I'm as in the dark as ever about the actual GC settings, Eden, Young and Perm gen, survivors, etc. And "heap" doesn't appear in the index at all?
So I guess... a few more things at the high-level? and a little bit more at the lowest-levels? The former is definitely an expectation on my part that the book doesn't even promise to fulfill, but would have been nice to see a bit more of (though it does have pointers to good resources); the latter just seems like the editor came through and said "let's not go there".
All in all? A worthwhile book for learning the language (if you already have a solid programming and/or CS foundation), and it provides a good layer of "why Java" on top of "how to Java", but expect to use it as a springboard for further learning depending on where your work Java actually takes you. I would recommend it to any competent developer that's looking to add Java to their toolkit.
----
PS - So. Much. Swing. 3 chapters... 148 pages of it. And plenty of references to it in the 2 chapters that follow. And then a chapter on applets. Who does this anymore?
PPS - JavaBeans chapter winds up feeling like tautology. ("The following bean class example is considered a bean because it follows the bean class paradigm." Yay!)
August 17, 2013
I remember using an earlier edition of this book to learn Java many years ago. I even used Java for writing simulations as part of my thesis. Since then, since I generally do scientific and technical computing, I have generally used Python and R linked with C, C++, and Fortran libraries instead of Java. But I have used languages on the Java Virtual Machine (Jython and Clojure) and I probably need a refresher on how the JVM works. This book does give a good overview of all of the scaffolding that goes along with programming in Java, but its focus on the language proper and web and GUI programming in particular leaves me wondering how to get real things done with it.
The first part of the book is what seems to be the standard first chapter of almost all programming books nowadays, a argument of why to use Java. While some things like the safety aspects of the JVM ring true, when he talks about the various dynamic languages he gets some basic facts wrong and mis-characterizes how these languages are used in practice. It would have been better if he did not include these sections at all because he frankly started loosing creditability here. (coming from Python, the general line is that Python is at its best as part of a two language solution, and Java is on the list of likely languages to pair Python with along with C, C++, and Fortran.)
Next are several chapters on setting up your machine to develop and run Java. And several chapters are required. I found many things that I often have to spend several hours looking up whenever I start or deploy a JVM based project so I'm glad that someone realized that this really needs to be in the beginning of an introductory Java book. Things like IDE's, setting up classpath and other environmental variables, and the whole java toolchain. While I applaud that this is required, it somewhat gives a lie to the idea that Java is a simple write one run everywhere tool.
The rest is a tour of the Java language. Data types, statements and expressions, exceptions, assertions, classes and objects. I was specially interested in the discussions on Generics and Threads, as I had not used them before. It could be that I'm spoiled by how Python handles the equivalent of Generics, and both Python and R multi-core libraries, but this seemed very detailed and complex (not helped by Java seeming to require that everything be declared in duplicate).
Despite the title, this felt like more of a reference than a tutorial. Having several chapters on setting up the scaffolding that is needed for every Java project is something that some places seem to gloss over as easy (especially if the IDE does it for you), but makes this book a handy reference. But in the advertise role of learning how to use Java, I'm still skeptical.
Disclaimer: I received a free electronic copy of this book through the OReilly Blogger program.
The first part of the book is what seems to be the standard first chapter of almost all programming books nowadays, a argument of why to use Java. While some things like the safety aspects of the JVM ring true, when he talks about the various dynamic languages he gets some basic facts wrong and mis-characterizes how these languages are used in practice. It would have been better if he did not include these sections at all because he frankly started loosing creditability here. (coming from Python, the general line is that Python is at its best as part of a two language solution, and Java is on the list of likely languages to pair Python with along with C, C++, and Fortran.)
Next are several chapters on setting up your machine to develop and run Java. And several chapters are required. I found many things that I often have to spend several hours looking up whenever I start or deploy a JVM based project so I'm glad that someone realized that this really needs to be in the beginning of an introductory Java book. Things like IDE's, setting up classpath and other environmental variables, and the whole java toolchain. While I applaud that this is required, it somewhat gives a lie to the idea that Java is a simple write one run everywhere tool.
The rest is a tour of the Java language. Data types, statements and expressions, exceptions, assertions, classes and objects. I was specially interested in the discussions on Generics and Threads, as I had not used them before. It could be that I'm spoiled by how Python handles the equivalent of Generics, and both Python and R multi-core libraries, but this seemed very detailed and complex (not helped by Java seeming to require that everything be declared in duplicate).
Despite the title, this felt like more of a reference than a tutorial. Having several chapters on setting up the scaffolding that is needed for every Java project is something that some places seem to gloss over as easy (especially if the IDE does it for you), but makes this book a handy reference. But in the advertise role of learning how to use Java, I'm still skeptical.
Disclaimer: I received a free electronic copy of this book through the OReilly Blogger program.
August 13, 2016
This books covers everything. I skipped out on the Swing chapters so I can't speak on those. The author did the best job I have seen so far in regards to explaining inheritance, polymorphism, and class design. He does a great job with File I/O and data streams and since this is the new edition he also appended an interesting section on the new java.nio package working with channels. I read the popular "Core Java" book before this one and came to this to get a different authors explanation in object-oriented programming with Java. I really felt like this one did a better job but I won't discredit "Core Java" as it was a solid book. I think this is a superb Java reference book that I will be referring to constantly in the future as I do that quite frequently as of today.
June 28, 2013
Learning Java (Fourth Edition) is book for Java practitioner as reference book. This covers lot of topics.
This is an excellent book for someone who knows basics of programming. This book is not beginners. This book lacks examples and exercises which may disappoint few people.
Book has 24 chapters covering almost all of basic Java. The chapter one talks about historical aspects. Second chapter is brief introduction of java but it assumes that reader is aware of programming, OOP, threading etc which is difficult for any beginner.
The detailed review is at
This is an excellent book for someone who knows basics of programming. This book is not beginners. This book lacks examples and exercises which may disappoint few people.
Book has 24 chapters covering almost all of basic Java. The chapter one talks about historical aspects. Second chapter is brief introduction of java but it assumes that reader is aware of programming, OOP, threading etc which is difficult for any beginner.
The detailed review is at
February 4, 2014
More pedagogical explanation than tutorial, Learning Java's light touch and lucid writing does a good job of refreshing Java into the mind of one who once knew it better. I went with the edition that covered Java 5, as that seems to be the version of the IDE that the Android ADK is locked in at. I would not recommend this book as an introduction to programming--it is only suitable for those already fluent in programming who want to acquire Java proficiency.
February 26, 2016
Part of my skills recovery plan.....I could not believe how into this book I got. Really enjoying thinking about old concepts in new ways. And years later I find myself wondering why I thought some of this was so hard to comprehend. Guess that's what happens when you are learning in the middle of a language being created.
July 4, 2012
Excellent book.
Complete book about java tecnhology.
Complete book about java tecnhology.
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February 20, 2014test
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