Eckel approaches teaching you to think in Java by introducing a topic, talking around it to put it in context, providing examples to try and then discussing them in depth. Each chapter has a summary followed by exercises. The book is structured for someone coming from a procedural language background. Eckel spends a lot of time on OOP concepts in general and the way in which it's implemented in Java. After covering operators Eckel goes on to program flow, initialisation and garbage collection, packages, class reuse, polymorphism and so on all the way up to distributed programming (servlets) and appendices on passing objects, the JNI, guidelines and resources. The whole book is also on CD (in several formats including HTML) with the source code (guaranteed to compile under Linux using Java 1.2.2). The CD also contains Thinking in C: Foundations for C++and Java.

Thinking In Java is basically a tutorial. You're intended to read it linearly and work the exercises. It helps that it's well written but it helps even more to have a programming background. If not, you'll probably want a straight Java reference to hand as well. --Steve Patient --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Description

Thinking in Java has earned raves from programmers worldwide for its extraordinary clarity, careful organization, and small, direct programming examples. It's the definitive introduction to object-oriented programming in the language of the world wide web. From the fundamentals of Java syntax to its most advanced features, Thinking in Java is designed to teach, one simple step at a time. Fully updated for J2SE5 with many new examples and chapters.