This is a great book if your great with Maths, and like bland talk. I still think its an alright book, however I prefer working examples that I could take note off to use when I start my own proper projects. The ending chapter examples are not worded too well. At times I had to view Ivors solution to just understand what I had to do (and the solutions mind you, use things which you havent seen and dont get explained till much later on).

The worst chapters for me so far are the File Read/Write chapters. They are really bland and there were a good 20pages with no coding just dribble talk about Bytes, Streams and how they work, these could have been done in 4-5pages, if this was so not only would it have uncomplicated things, it would have just made sense (for me I felt I went from one page and 2pages later ended back at the same spot). Now Im not the person who can exactly concentrate reading (reading isnt my thing) without doing some sort of exercise. And he seems to go over the same things (I will probably have to go back over a tutorial for File Read/Write).

Now just because "Beginning" is slapped on the title, this is no way a beginners book, unless of course you consider the first 4-5 chapters the beginners part, which mind you they dont go full into OO and he says that you may need another he actually does quite a good job, and even though the examples cant do much with they are actually quite well thought out, the rest on the other hand require you not only to try and understand how he has worded things (maybe my brain is dead by this time after some bland talk), majority of the examples arent interesting either.

Now if your thinking Im a beginner think again, I have been doing programming with PHP, Perl, C/C++ for over 4-5yrs so Im no new comer.

If this is your first language, this isnt the book for you. If your not so great with Maths or havent done it in a while (like myself) this again isnt the book for you. If you have the concentration span of about 10mins before you feel like your going to go insane because your not coding this is defianetly not the book for you. If you can withstand it all you will enjoy this book and I have had some chapters which were pretty good. However I will be looking for another book as well as Tutorials to grasp the things which just got way over complicated (i.e. File Read/Write).

I bought this book few years back to update myself on Java Knowledge. This book is very good, simple and details all the basics that is expected by any new java programmer. Those who know java can also use this to refresh their knowledge. This is a good buy.

This book is a great reference to Java language and how to program it. It also has an overly complicated/not well explained example in using ModelViewController pattern to program a shape drawing program. I also agree with other reviewers who complain he uses mathematical examples too much. Hint - if you hated geometry, buy a different book. But, if you have a sold HIgh School math / graphics background, I strongly recommend this book to learn a lot about java. It still is not comprehensive, but it's a great serious first book to learn java from.

I had the previous version of this book and lost it so I bought the new version because I really liked the one I had. Unfortunately my experience has been a little different with this version. It contains a lot of great information however I think it may have too much in it for most beginners and novices. It is also a very thick book and takes up a lot of space when carrying around.
The information is great in the book but it isn't something you'll be able to hold in with the first read.

This book is very thorough in it's coverage. It doesn't delve into the "why" as much as the Head First Java book does, but it certainly tackles the how-to very well (at great lengths sometimes). It's also a different style than the Head First series of books. It has more of a traditional feel about it. Beginners that want to approach Java from every angle might do well to opt for both Head First Java and this book.