Screaming Penguin - Source Does Matter

Yet another WROX title. This latest review covers a great intro Java book, "Beginning Java 2, JDK 1.3 Edition" by Ivor Horton. This one has been out for a while, buts its a massive book and I have been busy, so it took me a while to read it all (approx 1200 pages.)

Conclusion: this is a really good book. I am often very critical of technical books because they miss many details and fine points and or have errant examples (and I think the criticism is deserved on "technical" books that screw up technical stuff.) This book has none of the usual problems. Layout and content is logical, well written, very clear and there were no apparent errors. This book starts with the basics of Java and OOP and covers all of it (language constructs, identifiers, keywords, operators, classes, methods, constructors, loops and logic, collections, I/O, exceptions, utility classes, threads, AWT and Swing, JDBC, jar, javadoc and more.)

Ivor Horton is an excellent teacher and some of his examples of more abstract OOP concepts are the best ones I have encountered (objects themselves, encapsulation, polymorphism, binding, etc.) This book is not intended to contained detailed information about everything Java, that would take volumes and volumes. However, it is intended to provide a solid foundation of java and on that front it succeeds entirely.

Great book. Get it.

Rating. 5.0 Penguin Afros (out of a possible 5.2 on our scale.)   Beginning Java 2, Ivor Horton (WROX 2000)