Just Java 1.2 (Java Series) [ペーパーバック]

I started from a C++ background and had no trouble learning from this book. It might be tempting to skim through some of the beginning chapters that seem like something any C++ programmer would know (e.g. Object-Oriented Programming), but I recommend reading them. There are a lot of really good Java tips you don't want to miss, such as how constructors are invoked and how static blocks are loaded in the JVM.

Probably the biggest benefit of this book is that it tells you both the how and the why in many cases. Another positive is that the examples are small and to the point. In general there was a good amount of information per page.

The book's biggest weakness is the chapter on File I/O. This is common functionality that many Java programmers will use, but the presentation is not as easy to follow as the other chapters. Another drawback is the networking chapter, but there seem to be entire books dedicated to this subject.

If you are learning Java from an object oriented background, you will be glad you got this book. It's one of the thinner books on the shelf, believe it or not, but the information is top notch.

Other reviewers have complained about the difficulty of picking up OOP concepts from this book. I can understand their point of view, but in van der Linden's defense I think it should be pointed out that OOP is fairly hard to get ahold of the first time you're exposed to it, and I'm not sure other books are much easier.

I studied math in college, and I found that I didn't learn things from the teacher as much as I did by wrestling with the problems on my own. If you want to understand why the main method in your class has to instantiate an object of the class that contains the aforementioned main method in order to access an object member that isn't static, you're going to have to work through it on your own. It's the sort of understanding that a teacher can't really hand you on a silver platter. It's not really hard, but you do have to know what all the words mean. The experience of wrestling with these kinds of concepts is what makes them sink in.

So I would argue that this book is complete, in the sense that it takes you through the OOP concepts you need to learn. But fundamentally you have to confront those concepts by yourself, alone in front of your own computer with your own copy of the JDK. If you try to run through the book without confronting the issues that fly over your head in the early chapters, the rest of the book will be incomprehensible. It's analogous to what happens to you in French class if you don't learn the early grammar and vocabulary.

I enjoyed the style of the book. Linden makes you feel like there's a human being on the other side of word processor, with a personality, a sense of humor, and his own style and sensibility. I wish more computer books were like that, so many of them are impersonal and devoid of human content. Spending time with this book is a little more like spending time with a person, which is a good thing in my opinion.

Part of Linden's personality is a fairly ideological approach to the computer industry. He's down on Microsoft and an evangelist for Java. I'm not sure that's a bad thing, but the anti-Microsoft stuff might rub some people the wrong way.

I think it's a great book overall.