Thought I would start a new thread just for this. I haven’t done much research, but I too like O’Reilly books and I read up a little on “Java in a Nutshell” at amazon.com. It gets only three stars in user reviews and sounds like it’s probalby more or a reference than anything, but some of the reviews also say that “it’s for beginners” (which is me) and that it does have a comprehensive appendix that covers every available Java library package. I have a lot of faith in O’Reilly books and I’m thinking even if it is mostly a reference it could come in handy and be a worthwhile addition.
They also offer a companion book called “Java Examples in a Nutshell” that gets five stars and sounds very useful in providing walkthrough examples from a lot of different aspects of Java.
amazon.com:
Java in a Nutshell – $26.37
Java Examples in a Nutshell – $27.17
Barnes & Noble:
Java in a Nutshell – $31.96 ($28.76 for members)
Java Examples in a Nutshell – $39.95 ($35.95 for members)
Overstock.com (I like this site)
Java in a Nutshell – $23.19
Java Examples in a Nutshell – $23.19
($2.80 shipping for two items at overstock)
I have the “In a nutshell” companion examples, it seems decent enough. It might seem even better if I had the book this is supposed to be companion-ing. I will take a look on the Books 24×7 and see if I can find any other good candidates.
I made the trip to Barnes & Noble’s and took a look at the O’Reilly Java books. I wasn’t too impressed with the Java in a Nutshell book. I was even less enthusiastic when I realized that my companion book is out of date. The O’Reilly Learning Java didn’t really grab me either. I checked out some of the other books and found one I liked enough to buy.
I ended up with Sam’sTeach Yourself Java 2 in 21 days.
Rationale:
-The book is broken up into convenient chunks that cover a good deal of what we have talked about as high level goals. JavaBeans, networking, JDBC, and XML have their own “days” dedicated to them.
-At $36 (w/ B&N discount), it is cheaper than buying the two seperate O’Reilly books. One intergrated book is better than 2 seperate ones, in my opinion.
-Relatively current: Published in 2004, covers Java2/sdk 1.5, which is what we are working with. The enclosed cd even has NetBeans 3.6, which seems like a good indicator that it isn’t too out of date.
If you buy online right now, the member price is under $30, sans tax and shipping.
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbninquiry.asp?ISBN=0672326280&userid=4C5rQZ3A6L&cds2Pid=946&pdf=y
Word. I’ll pick up a copy at some point, sounds good to me.
I’m ordering the book this weekend. In the meantime I’m piddling around with these examples at work. Once I have the book I’ll probably just use that, but thought I would at least note that I found this and it’s somewhat worthwhile.
http://math.hws.edu/javanotes/
Also, thanks to this, I have learned that all that .awt stuff I was talking about the other day is totally outdated and now it uses something called “swing” classes. Good thing I caught on to that before I did something dumb like dropped the phrase “awt class” in my next interview thinking I was using a buzz word or something. I’ve got a ways to go.