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Sekre

Member

From: The Rainy North

Registered: 2006-11-24

Posts: 116

java course litterature choice

Hello fellow Archers!

I'm heading for uni this autumn to study Software Engineering.
And my first coarse is on Java and I've had some troubles locating the books
other than on e-shops. Which makes it hard to get a good impression about the
books, so I've turned to my fellow archers in hope that someone here has
used any of these books and can give me an opinion (:

o  David J. Barnes and Michael Kölling, Objects First with Java; a
practical introduction using BlueJ, third edition, isbn 0-13-197629-
X, Prentice Hall, 2006. (2nd edition is also usable, but 3rd edition is
preferred).

o  John Lewis, William Loftus, Java Software Solutions: Foundations of
Program Design: International Edition, 6/E, 0321549341 

o  Walter Savitch, Absolute Java: International Edition, 3/E,
0321505042

o  Y. Daniel Liang, Introduction to Java Programming, Comprehensive:
International Edition, 7/E, 013605966

Since I've dabbled with Java in school some years ago, and been doing some
other programming since I don't really need one that is first and foremost targeted to
non-programmers but more for a book that I can have on my shelf/desk most of my
time during my first year of uni.

Thanks on beforehand!

-- Sebastian

Mith

Member

From: out there

Registered: 2004-10-05

Posts: 163

Re: java course litterature choice

I used the Walter Savitch book in a Java course before and I liked it a lot. Enough to not sell it back / try to resell it. Definitely suited for beginners and well written. The only thing I missed was a more in depth discussion of the MVC pattern but that doesn't make the book less valuable. [and I didn't really depend on the discussion of it...] I'm at work right now but if you have any more questions about that specific book I can look stuff up @ home..

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ArchLinux (x86_64) w/ kdemod

skottish

Forum Fellow

From: Here

Registered: 2006-06-16

Posts: 7,942

Re: java course litterature choice

Although I haven't programmed in Java for many years, I always liked the Core Java series when I was.

Sekre

Member

From: The Rainy North

Registered: 2006-11-24

Posts: 116

Re: java course litterature choice

I used the Walter Savitch book in a Java course before and I liked it a lot. Enough to not sell it back / try to resell it. Definitely suited for beginners and well written. The only thing I missed was a more in depth discussion of the MVC pattern but that doesn't make the book less valuable. [and I didn't really depend on the discussion of it...] I'm at work right now but if you have any more questions about that specific book I can look stuff up @ home..

ooh, would be great. Too bad I've been held up most of the day so I couldn't reply :S
anyway. I do have some few questions for you if you don't mind

How is the book in terms of source code examples are there many/few, practical/strictly theoretical ?
The book I had in High School were totally useless in terms of source code examples so you basically had to have a second book simply to look at some examples. Was kinda a bummer for our teacher

How are the exercises if any in the book? Short and relevant or requiring more problem solving than `Hello World`-ish exercises?

And last question, at the beginning of new chapters do they early introduce you to some sourcecode for that specific chapter or do you have to read through 5-10 pages before you actually see some relevant code?  (Strongly prefer to see an implementation early since it helps me understand what I read)

Sorry for the maybe somewhat lengthy questions but if I'm gonna have to pay 35-50€ for a book I might aswell try to figure out beforehand exactly which one I want ^^

Although I haven't programmed in Java for many years, I always liked the Core Java series when I was.

from what I could find out by a quick google it seems to be what I want, though it said somewhere in the papers (god I hate wordy papers ) I got some days ago that they strongly recommend we get one or more of the books above, not sure how tied to specific books they could be though since they recommend no less than four books    gonna send them an email and see what they think about non-listed books as main source for learning just to be safe.

Last edited by Sekre (2008-07-24 19:37:06)

Mith

Member

From: out there

Registered: 2004-10-05

Posts: 163

Re: java course litterature choice

How is the book in terms of source code examples are there many/few, practical/strictly theoretical ?
The book I had in High School were totally useless in terms of source code examples so you basically had to have a second book simply to look at some examples. Was kinda a bummer for our teacher

I think there are a lot of examples. Not like on every page but definitely every other page. As far as how practical the examples are, I guess they get the point across of whatever he's trying to show .. they are fairly understandable.

How are the exercises if any in the book? Short and relevant or requiring more problem solving than `Hello World`-ish exercises?

every chapter has exercises at the end (with solutions). They range from conceptual questions to actual programming assignments. There's a companion website that has solutions to the bigger coding problems. I've never really done any of them as the course that used the book had custom problems and didn't take the ones from the book.

And last question, at the beginning of new chapters do they early introduce you to some sourcecode for that specific chapter or do you have to read through 5-10 pages before you actually see some relevant code?  (Strongly prefer to see an implementation early since it helps me understand what I read)

as far as Savitch's book is concerned, he usually dives right in with text in the beginning followed immediately by either diagrams or actual source code to illustrate what's going on.

Like I said, I liked that book a lot and it's not "dry" or anything like that.
There's nothing about reflection in this book and general design patterns are not really covered at all.
I guess it does what it's supposed to do, i.e. get you started with Java(introduce you classes, methods, generics, exceptions, collections)

this might help.. these are the chapters w/ page numbers where they start

Ch. 01 - getting started 1
Ch. 02 - console input and output  57
Ch. 03 - flow of control  93
Ch. 04 - defining classes I  163
Ch. 05 - defining classes II  247
Ch. 06 - arrays  333
Ch. 07 - inheritance   413
Ch. 08 - polymorphism and abstract classes   467
Ch. 09 - exception handling   507
Ch. 10 - file i/o   561
Ch. 11 - recursion   633
Ch. 12 - uml and patterns   671
Ch. 13 - interfaces and inner classes  693
Ch. 14 - generics and the arrayList class   739
Ch. 15 - linked data structures   783
Ch. 16 - collections, maps and iterators   881
Ch. 17 - swing I   923
Ch. 18 - swing II   1001
Ch. 19 - java never ends...   1065

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ArchLinux (x86_64) w/ kdemod

Sekre

Member

From: The Rainy North

Registered: 2006-11-24

Posts: 116

Re: java course litterature choice

How is the book in terms of source code examples are there many/few, practical/strictly theoretical ?
The book I had in High School were totally useless in terms of source code examples so you basically had to have a second book simply to look at some examples. Was kinda a bummer for our teacher

I think there are a lot of examples. Not like on every page but definitely every other page. As far as how practical the examples are, I guess they get the point across of whatever he's trying to show .. they are fairly understandable.
...

wow! That's a load of good information
Thanks! Think I know what that book is about now then, still gonna see if I can get some more info on the other three just in case but this does seem like a far better book than the one I had before, and I like at least how it looks like, in the chapter listing, with io early and going into classes/other "boring"-ish stuff later in the book. Concerning design patterns that won't really be a problem I guess, will have a course on that in Jan and till then I can simply use the design patterns book from Bruce Eckel. Still good to know.

e-Cookie to Mith!

Lord Illidan

Member

From: Malta

Registered: 2007-10-25

Posts: 248

Re: java course litterature choice

I used the Liang book. Excellent book, gets into a lot of detail and covers a lot of stuff, both console and swing related. It also has a decent amount of web-related stuff, although we didn't look into them in class.

Sekre

Member

From: The Rainy North

Registered: 2006-11-24

Posts: 116

Re: java course litterature choice

I used the Liang book. Excellent book, gets into a lot of detail and covers a lot of stuff, both console and swing related. It also has a decent amount of web-related stuff, although we didn't look into them in class.

yeah, I found this some days ago and had a look at it. Seemed to be a really cool book (although I only found 6/E) anyhow after receiving my study funds/pay/whatever I had a look at a local online seller of these books and the price-difference made me finally settle with Savitch's book. Seems Mith really liked this book so I hope I will too

Both hate it and love it when money comes in and simplify decision making. Good when it's a tie like this one though.
Thanks for your replies, will comment back in a week or so when I get my book for future references!