Sams Teach Yourself Java 6 in 21 Days

Product Description

“If you get only one Java book, it should be Sams Teach Yourself Java in 21 Days” –PC Magazine



In just 21 days, you can acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to develop three kinds of programs with Java: applications on your computer, servlets on a web server, and browser-launched Java Web Start applications.



No previous programming experience required. By following the 21 carefully organized lessons in this book, anyone can learn the basics of Java programming.



Learn at your own pace. You can work through each chapter sequentially to make sure you thoroughly understand all of the concepts and methodologies, or you can focus on specific lessons to learn the techniques that interest you most.



Test your knowledge. Each chapter ends with a Workshop section filled with questions, answers, and exercises for further study. There are even certification practice questions.



“Sams Teach Yourself Java is one of the best introductions to hands-on Java programming. If you buy one book on Java, this is the one to buy!” –Independent Web Review



* Completely revised, updated, and expanded to cover the latest features of Java 6
* Learn to develop standalone Java applications, web servlets, JavaServer Pages, and Java Web Start applications
* Easy-to-understand, practical examples clearly illustrate the fundamentals of Java programming
* Discover how Swing can help you quickly develop programs with a graphical user interface
* Find out about JDBC database programming, Internet client/server programming, and XML parsing with the open source XOM class library
* Covers new features of version 6 such as Java DB, the new relational database that is now a built-in
* part of Java



Rogers Cadenhead is a web application developer who has written 22 books on Internet-related topics, including Sams Teach Yourself Java 2 in 24 Hours. He maintains this book’s official website at http://www.java21days.com.



Laura Lemay is one of the world’s most popular authors on Web development topics. She is the author of the bestselling Sams Teach Yourself Web Publishing with HTML, as well as Sams Teach Yourself Perl in 21 Days.



CD-ROM includes:

* Source code for the examples developed in the book
* Java™ SE Development Kit 6
* NetBeans™ IDE 5.5
* Bonus materials



Category: Java Programming

Covers: Java 6 Platform Standard Edition

User Level: Beginning—Intermediate



$44.99 USA / $55.99 CAN / £31.99 Net UK (inc. of VAT)

Product Details

* Amazon Sales Rank: #38211 in Books
* Published on: 2007-06-04
* Original language: English
* Number of items: 1
* Binding: Paperback
* 720 pages

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Rogers Cadenhead is a web application developer and author. He has written 22 books on Internet-related topics, including Sams Teach Yourself Java in 24 Hours. He’s also a web publisher whose sites receive more than 24 million visits per year. He maintains this book’s official website at http://www.java21days.com and a personal weblog at http://www.cadenhead.org.



Laura Lemay is a technical writer and author. After spending six years writing software documentation for various computer companies in Silicon Valley, she decided that writing books would be much more fun. In her spare time, she collects computers, email addresses, interesting hair colors, and nonrunning motorcycles. She is also the perpetrator of Sams Teach Yourself Web Publishing with HTML in a Week and Sams Teach Yourself Perl in 21 Days and a personal weblog at http://blog.lauralemay.com.







Customer Reviews

Confusing Appendix A JDK tutorial, and that is just the start!1
Appendix A "teaches" you how to get the JDK (java development kit) configured. It is a night mare for someone like me, a beginner. Here are the problems:

1) It wasn't mentioned in the "Running Programs in MS-DOS" that you are supposed to restart your computer after configuring the environment variables, the only place it was mentioned was for Experienced users, and I'm not one of them! Do you know how long it took me to figure that out! I had to reread Appendix A three times! And guess!

2) No where in Appendix A was it mentioned for the "inexperienced user" that you need to include a period for the class path. It was only mentioned for the "experienced user" which, I am not! I skipped over the "experienced user" instructions, because the book said, "For inexperienced MS-DOS users, the following section covers in detail how to set the PATH and CLASSPATH variables on a Windows system" --FALSE!!!!

3)The website tutorial for appendix a touches on the period issue, but not well enough. It has this ".;" which I thought was a typo because no where else was it mentioned. And the picture on the site showed the period after the semi-colon. What the heck?

Please GOD, don't let the rest of the book be this way!

The only thing I like about the book is the one day at a time approach. Any one else know of a good alternative to this book?

Java at your pace4
Likes:
A co-worker recommended the book to me and let me borrow it briefly. I found I liked the pacing in the book and the attempt by the authors to modularize each of the chapters making them correspond to days in a week. Due to other "life" distractions I found myself not necessarily able to keep up with the Java in 21 days but I still found it easier to progress through this book as opposed to other similar "[Insert language, application, software, etc., here] in X number of days" books. The examples are good and the authors get the book text to correspond well with the examples. I felt I understood the general concept of what the authors were trying to convey and I enjoyed working through the examples and exercises at my own pace. I felt that the modular chapters of the book would allow me to read through the chapters in most any sequence with the same ease as reading from beginning to end.

I found the website more convenient to use than the CD and the author seems to keep the book's online portion fairly current.

Dislikes:
The installation of Java instructions in Appendix A are aimed more at Windows and UNIX users but little or no mention is given to Mac OS X users. I would have preferred some assistance with upgrading Java on the Mac with help from the book or CD. I managed to get by however with Java 5 in Mac OS X. Some Mac users not familiar with installing/updating Java may encounter difficulty if they rely on the book and/or CD alone, particularly the CLASSPATH used in Mac OS X.

There are a couple of typos and errors that need to be fixed (i.e., for some odd reason the references in the book to signed/unsigned data-types are incorrect).

Overall:
I'm still going through the book and the things I like about the book, CD and website outweigh what I dislike about each of these items. Despite my dislikes I felt the book deserved 4 out of 5 starts (well 3.5 out of 5 but I can't give half a star).

This does NOT cover java 61
I am a certified programmer for java 1.4, and I bought this book on the title alone to get me up to date with the upgrades to version 6. What a disappointment to find that annotations are not covered at all, and generics only partially. Furthermore the collections framework is largely ignored. I looks like a java 1.3 book with some added examples to make it look like a version 6 book, but it is NOT. So if you need a book to study for the certification exam, this book is definitely NOT the one to get.
I found it a complete waste of money.