Apr 23, 2001 05:28 PM
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“Kya yaar, the world outside has moved so fast and everyone is talking of Java and now C Sharp, and our college still has FORTRAN and PASCAL in the syllabus”. “We have C in third semester and later OOPS and C++ combined with DSP in final semester.” Even as I travel from home to office in local train, I came across many college students and the above quotes are the ones I overhear most of the times. (yeah bad manners – I know!) The immediate next query or school of thought is around the most hyped language so far – Java. “Are ekdam simple hai”, “If you know C or C++, then Java is easy to learn, it’s a breeze” are some more expert comments.
With all private classes from NIIT, SSI, Wintech, Boston, Aptech, Karrox and now CDAC and BigLeap with IIT Kharagpur advertising their courses in Java, the students are all roped in easily. So all freshers, beginners, amateurs, welcome to the world of Java. Actually the truth is that, however much one joins a course, it is always better to have a Java reference book. Beginners are always lucky on these grounds as there is a plethora of books available, which are aimed at beginners. But when it comes to shelling out Rs. 400 plus and all books are nice, colorful, descriptive, and voluminous and come with CD-ROMs, choosing a book can get on the nerves. So a beginner with a fair idea of Java can visit a bookstore and flip few pages but the task of choosing “the one” can worsen plainly because of curiosity combined with lack of appropriate knowledge. So let me help you out with one answer, Java 2: The Complete Reference by Herbert Schildt, 4th edition. The reasons are as follows:
For all programmers: Java, as per my experience in making applications, is not simple as people believe, and I definitely knew C and VB6 before venturing in Java. But this particular book is by far simple and methodical with examples that explain the concepts very well. It is designed such that readers need not require any previous programming example. In fact, C/C++ programmers may even afford to skip the first 5 chapters, but I recommend reading it at least once as there are some minor differences eg: usage of the letter ‘f’ after float literals. Use of arrays as objects, the Vector class, concept of primitive datatypes and Wrapper class etc. C++ programmers enjoy a bonus feature. There is an entire chapter that helps one understand differences between C++ and Java. This is particularly important considering that Java does not support pointers, does not include structures, unions, operator overloading, multiple inheritance, objects cannot be passed by value and yet this is not a handicap. Java can still achieve all such tasks in a more simpler and clean manner.
The Methodical Approach: Starting right from history of C to the migration to Java, the importance of Java and its features are explicitly highlighted in Ch.1. Ch.2 to Ch. 5 cover the basics like datatypes, variables, arrays, control loops, operators etc. The concepts of OOPS are also covered. Ch. 6 to Ch. 8 clearly explains the fundamentals of classes and everything related to classes such as its methods, nesting of classes, Inner Classes etc. Ch. 9 to Ch. 12 are devoted to newer concepts that Java specializes in such as Exception Handling, Multithreading, I/O methods etc. The part II carries the beginners to advanced levels and provides simplistic examples to explain the String Class (special feature of Java) and the java.util and java.lang packages, Streams for I/O and file operations and Networking. Having understood Java so far, users may be under opinion that VB with its GUI interface is so simple but Java with so much coding and DOS prompt commands like javac for compiling is so boring. Not quite! The part II covers the most important features of Java i.e. Applets, AWT, JFC and Swings in a lucid manner. This part also covers RMI. The part III helps in development of softwares using Java by explaining the concepts of JavaBeans. Part IV has coding examples that covers it all.
The Presentation: The looks of the book are simple and are not crammed like the Core Java volumes from Sun Microsystems. The font size of the text is big and readable. The examples are put in different lighter font and keywords are in bold typeface. The examples are simple, properly indented and commented making it even easier as understand.
Is The Book all that Good? For beginners, yes all the way. But for advanced or even intermediate people like me – NO. The reasons are:
Incomplete Complete Reference: Is that a paradox? The complete reference is incomplete. It covers only a few things with beginners in mind. The Swings and components are incomplete. Only few methods are covered. Others are not even listed. The “Mastering Java 2 by John Zukowski” scores over this book in this aspect as it (God bless me) – covers all that Java offers by giving entire class definitions and brief explanation of all the methods, constants of all classes.
Where is JDBC? Not a single mention of this powerful and most useful feature from Java that helps us to build database applications/applets. The book does not cover others like Servlets, EJB and JSP.
No CD: It has an orange sticker like print that says “FREE CODE” in big size and “online” I small size. So go to https://osborne.com and download the code. I would rather prefer typing it out instead of increasing my phone bills.
Last word: :Worth a buy for freshers, beginners and also for those giving the SCJP but mind you (for SCJP people) the book is incomplete.
