Lunch With George!

Another LWG User Group Book Review:

 
O'Reilly has just released the BEST Java book ever! I spotted their new book Head First Java at Barnes and Noble last week. It's very different-looking-- the cover is cluttered with stuff, and there's a distorted photo of what I must assume is a Java geek. The book is hefty, yet the pages boast a surprisingly large amount of white space. Sprinkled in among the text and figures are what look like hand-written annotations which explain nearly every aspect of what appears in the figures.

I was impressed! I flipped it over, saw the US $39.95 price tag, and decided I could wait for a sale.

Not two days later, a package arrived from O'Reilly, addressed to the LWG Java/C/C++ User Group. Amazingly, it was a FREE review copy of Head First Java! I could barely believe my eyes. I sat up in bed pretty late going through the first chapter, learning all over again what a class is in Java.

It is designed to really get you to learn. The authors, Kathy Sierra and Bert Bates, have a keen interest in cognitive learning processes, and Kathy currently trains trainers at Sun Microsystems (you can read an on-line interview of the authors here). The book is fun, interesting, and hard to put down. There are lots of different kinds of exercises to try out your just-acquired knowledge, helping to turn it into understanding. But don't take it from me-- please read this excerpt from chapter 2 entitled A trip to Objectville.

If you need to learn Java, then I can say without reservation that this book is a must. If you just want to memorize enough Java to pass the Sun Java Programmer Certification Exam, try another book.

Last modified 10/12/2003.