(Ebook) Java in 60 Minutes A Day by R. F. Raposa ISBN 9780471423140, 0471423149

(Ebook) Java in 60 Minutes A Day by R. F. Raposa ISBN 9780471423140, 0471423149

Aug 2007 (see end for most recent updates) I'm fairly pleased with what I've read so far in this book. I'm in the process of devouring it off my NetLibrary account and in the past five or so hours, I've sailed through the first five chapters. I can't comment on "significant" errors the previous reviewer posted, though I can say that some of the problems are really obvious. For example, in many cases where quotes (") were required, my copy shows double tick marks ('') instead. I'm not sure if this is a problem with NetLibrary or the text itself. The examples given are all shown from a Windows command prompt (so far) and the author assumes the reader can use Notepad to enter code. I would prefer that the author takes time to move readers toward Eclipse IDE since it's free and can really help reduce the tedium of entering / debugging and running Java code, thus making it easier to learn and more fun to interact with. Granted - it takes a bit of effort to get Eclipse installed, but so did installing Java for the first time. I've been writing software for the past twenty-five years and am just now starting to pick up Java (wish I had picked it up ten years ago now). The authors methods make me think beyond the printed text and do a good job of helping readers adapt from a procedural style of programming (identifying the steps to solving a problem) to a more object-oriented style (identifying unique classes of "stuff" and writing ways to make those classes interact). As I said above, I haven't finished the book yet, and while I probably wouldn't have paid $50 for what I've gotten so far, it is clearly worth checking out. It got me interested enough to file a positive review here and I am acutally considering buying the book. --- May 2008 I purchased this book a few months ago and found that my experience with the first five chapters has continued nicely up through chapter 12. While I haven't had as much time to devote to this book until very recently, I am pleased to report that I'm still finding that the quality level is about 4 / 5. When I peeked at chapter 18 - JDBC, it appears that one must have MS Access in order to use the examples. That frustrates me since I'm a Unix-based user and don't have MS Access. All-in-all, however, I'm glad I bought the book, though I have to admit, I was able to snag it used from Amazon for about $2 plus shipping. It's clearly worth that, but I'm still leaning more toward "Learning Java" (O'Reilly) for the more advanced concepts. I may just switch back over to "Learning Java" now that I've got the core concepts down (chapters 1-11). By the way - the problem with quoting appears to be a NetLibrary issue, not one with the book.