Customer Reviews

Ivor Horton's Beginning Java 2: JDK 5 Edition (Wrox Beginning Guides)

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I started using the JDK 3 version of this book many years ago together with the book "Programming with Java" by John Hubbard to teach a number of Java courses at Croydon college. The reason I chose the book is that I wanted to add more material to the course than that available in the Hubbard book.

I recently purchased from a charity shop, very cheaply, a copy of this book. At first appearance it appears to be similar to the older book, but it is printed on thinner paper and has rather more pages.
The earlier chapters in the book differ very little from the older book, but there are many more chapters to make up for additions to the language since around 2000. Like the older books, keyboard input is treated as a difficult subject and appears late in the book. The scanner class - which makes keyboard input much easier now appears in this edition, but not until page 714 (chapter 15).

This, I consider to be a good book, but it definitely is not for beginners. It is far to big and detailed. To write a beginners book you have to be far more selective about what you leave out. This book is very comprehensive. I am quite happy to think of this as a book for a second course in programming or as a reference text.

I've been a fan of Ivor Horton's Java books for some years, and so it saddens me that I can't possibly recommend this read. It is simply riddled with typos and errors such that it is impossible to have any confidence in the text. What is worse is that this book is targeted at newcomers to the increasingly complex Java platform but I feel that this book might easily confuse and confound beginners.
I've been recommending Ivor's books to beginners for year, but now I simply cannot.

A well written book that is very easy to learn from. The quality however lets the book down, with pages falling out probably due to cheap glue.

I bought this book for a programming course at my university. I had little programming background, I didn't know any other programming language before Java.

Horton guided me almost exclusively to the basics (and not only) of Java. The book is written for people with none or little programming knowledge, so I'm certain it will suit any beginner.

Another great plus of this book is that it offers some extra information on how things work in Java, so you get an extra insight and not just some very beginner's knowledge.

On the other side, there are some disadvantages. Exercises are scarce (around 4-5 at the end of every -big- chapter) and the author just seems to go on and on (and on...) on some particular topics. Moreover, the author sometimes tends to repeat himself.

All in all, I'd recommend this book to anyone who wants to seriously start learning Java.