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Java 5.-0 Program Design is about the fundamentals of programming and software development using Java. It is targeted for a first programming course and has been designed to be appropriate for people from all disciplines. The authors assume no prior programming skills and use mathematics and science at a level appropriate to first-year college students. The breadth of coverage and the arrangement of the chapters provide flexibility for the instructor in what and when topics are introduced.

Key to Java 5.0 Program Design is an introduction to problem solving. The basics of problem-solving techniques are introduced in chapter one and then reinforced during the explanations of Java programming and design. In addition, software engineering design concepts are introduced via problem studies and software projects.

This updated version of Java Program Design takes advantage of the improvements to the language introduced with Java 5.0. The additions are especially important for beginning programmers because they help make program design and development a clearer and more straightforward process.

Average Customer Rating:

Middle of the road	Customer Rating:
The information presented in this book was organized efficiently, however some of the information was not presented effectively to describe the processes. The sidebar notes were very helpful as were the end of chapter reviews. Overall, I learned a great deal using it. One improvement is to make the code available for the programs contained in the book on a CD-ROM or via website.

Good, but it needs more material, more details.

Customer Rating:

First of all, do not buy this book unless it is a requirement for a college class. And even then I suggest getting a used copy or searching the internet for the lowest price. This book is NOT in the same league as "Beginning Java" by Ivor Horton or any other self-teach-yourself books. With that said, "Java 5.0 Program Design" does accomplish its goal as a basic introduction to the Java language. Most of the chapters are well written, but the format of the book is a little bit distracting to say the least. There are parts where code is shown in one or two pages, and the analysis of a particular piece of that code is shown two, three, even four pages later. It is this constant flipping of the pages that gets into your nerves from time to time. Nevertheless, the book does give good coverage of the topics that includes, and it is precisely here where the book's biggest flaw becomes apparent. Mr. Cohoon, and Mr. Davidson do not include many of the more in-depth (harder) topics such as streams. When a new concept is presented it is usually accompanied by very few examples of how it can be used in different situations. Furthermore, there were times when I was left scratching my head as to what the code is doing; for example when a program tried to reproduce the behavior of the windows command prompt. Of course, not everything in the book is bad. The questions and problems at the end of each chapter are helpful to understand the features of Java and the extra chapters in GUI programming are fun to read. But until the authors decide to include more material and cover it in more detail this book is not a must have for the beginner programmer or a useful reference for the professional Java developer.

Don't Waste Your Money--Go Elsewhere to Learn Java

Customer Rating:

What this book sorely lacks in clarity, it more than makes up for with typographical errors. If you need to learn Java, you might want to consider the tutorials on Sun Microsystems' website [...]. Aside from being free, they are particularly useful if you are coming to Java already knowing another high-level computer language (preferably something C-based, as the syntax and structure are identical). This book, regardless of your background, will be a waste of time and money. If Java will be your first language, you *absolutely* must avoid this text at all costs. (You have my sympathy if this text has been assigned by an instructor in some class you're taking.) First and foremost, the writing is intolerably vague and unnecessarily complex. (And, as a patent attorney with a background in physics and computer science, I've slogged through my share of vague and complex technical writing, but this text really takes the cake.) I found myself reading and rereading entire sections of key chapters over and over and over, before finally abandoning the book in preference for the above-noted Sun tutorials. The authors could stand a few lessons in clarity and style. (Harsh medicine from a lawyer, I'm sure.) Secondly, the material is organized in an incomprehensibly poor manner. Why, for example, would you turn to the chapter on iteration (for, while, and do-while loops) to learn how to open an i/o file and execute read and write commands? (I kid you not--check out pages 265-270.) A separate chapter on file processing, even if quite small, would have been far more useful and easier to find. But this is not the only example. The whole text is written in this disorganized fashion--like one giant segue from an aside that began as a sidebar to some footnote comment somewhere. If I were to write this way, I would lose my job in no time. The organizational difficulties are particularly problematic since only a brief table of contents (listing only the chapter and appendix titles) is provided. The index is useful, but reading this book straight through requires some background in programming in order to be of any value. Otherwise, it would be just too difficult to compartmentalize the material in any useful context. I found myself constantly reshuffling the discussion into some logical order. Thirdly. . .and then there are the errors. Several code segments in this text will not compile. Many others that do compile simply contain other mistakes. Expect a long errata sheet--or, perhaps, another edition (preferably with a thorough re-write)--from the publisher soon. I used the text as part of a univeristy course in order to stay current with "new" technologies, and the mistake count quickly rose above a dozen before I stopped referring to the text entirely. This was in week four at chapter three, or something egregious like that. The instructor even had to send out revised code segments from the book for the students to complete an assignment. That is simply inexcusable for a textbook with a retail price of nearly $100.00. I can fully appreciate the need to be the first to market with a book on the recent release of Java 5.0 by Sun, but that's no excuse for the publisher to take a Microsoft-like approach to quality control. The editors should really consider what the heck went wrong in working on this text. And, lastly, the most annoying feature of this book is that it very poorly implements an "objects-first" approach to teaching a computer language. Pedagogically, I can understand the impulse. After all, object-oriented programming does require a different way of thinking about writing code than does a procedure-oriented approach (like C, BASIC, Fortran, Pascal, assembly language, etc.) While reasonable minds may differ on the issue, I strongly believe learning the procedural approach first is far easier on the student. I would imagine over 90% of the professional programmers out there today learned that way. By giving a cursory review of objects in Chapter 3, before completing a treatment of even the basic command set (decisions, iteration, arrays, etc.), the authors simply overwhelm any student or reader new to programming with unnecessary information. Certainly, it is far easier to master things like if, if-else, switch, for, while, and do-while statements before learning how and when to pass parameters to methods and classes, much less write the methods, classes, and (dare I say) interfaces. Messrs. Cohoon and Davidson, apparently, don't see things this way. Mixing the two approaches provides little in the way of altering thinking patterns, and only complicates the explanations unnecessarily. This likely accounts for at least some of the organizational problems noted above. Even so, if an objects-first approach is the preferred way, then there must be a simpler and less convoluted method for going about it. The authors of this book, however, have not found it, despite their "objects-right" comments in the preface. At most, the text provides a few redeeming sections--including two supplemental chapters on GUI programming, which I thought were well done and quite useful (though probably not accessible to a complete newbie), and an appendix listing the primary methods from standard Java packages. The latter is not as thorough as the descriptions provided on Sun's website, but it is conveniently organized (for a change), and it is nice to have a paper version of these libraries for convenient look-up. In fact, I'll probably hang on to the book just for the appendix, at least until I outgrow it, before passing it on to some unsuspecting soul. . .probably for free, simply out of guilt. In sum, fare thee well ye who hazard entrance into the sepulcher of the great Java wizard through this text. Roll your twelve-sided dice. Then find another portal. Any other portal! (Sorry, I don't have any recommendations for what other books might be helpful, except for Sun's website, which might not be accessible to the complete novice.)

Self Study Utopia!

Customer Rating:

Well, the concepts at the beginning of the book (chapter 1 and 2) are conveyed in a rather "jump right into it" - style. And one needs a little guidance at the beginning to set the mood for the Java learning process. However, once this is achieved, each chapter thereafter is very well written. A lot of the books out there have a very steep curve for understanding, as they give a lot of terms and concepts, which one has to swallow down without actually tasting them. This book, however, is written in such a way that it bestows you with not just the knowledge, but a bit of the experience in the application of the knowledge as well. Each chapter sets out to solve one problem, and in the process of solving the problem you learn what the chapter has to teach. A nice approach. This book is ideal for beginners, and dito for self study. People with no programming knowledge at all, (like me), will need a little help at the beginning, but thereafter its a smooth ride to the finish. What I suggest for a complete beginner is to pick up the "Beginning Java for Dummies" book, read it, and then set out to read this book.