“If you get only one Java book, it should be Sams Teach Yourself Java in 21 Days”   –PC Magazine

In just 21 days, you can acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to develop three kinds of programs with Java: applications on your computer, servlets on a web server, and browser-launched Java Web Start applications.

No previous programming experience required. By following the 21 carefully organized lessons in this book, anyone can learn the basics of Java programming.

Learn at your own pace. You can work through each chapter sequentially to make sure you thoroughly understand all of the concepts and methodologies, or you can focus on specific lessons to learn the techniques that interest you most.

Test your knowledge. Each chapter ends with a Workshop section filled with questions, answers, and exercises for further study. There are even certification practice questions.

“Sams Teach Yourself Java is one of the best introductions to hands-on Java programming. If you buy one book on Java, this is the one to buy!”  –Independent Web Review

• Completely revised, updated, and expanded to cover the latest features of Java 6

• Learn to develop standalone Java applications, web servlets, JavaServer Pages, and Java Web Start applications

• Easy-to-understand, practical examples clearly illustrate the fundamentals of Java programming

• Discover how Swing can help you quickly develop programs with a graphical user interface

• Find out about JDBC database programming, Internet client/server programming, and XML parsing with the open source XOM class library

• Covers new features of version 6 such as Java DB, the new relational database that is now a built-in

• part of Java

Rogers Cadenhead is a web application developer who has written 22 books on Internet-related topics, including Sams Teach Yourself Java 2 in 24 Hours. He maintains this book’s official website at http://www.java21days.com.

Laura Lemay is one of the world’s most popular authors on Web development topics. She is the author of the bestselling Sams Teach Yourself Web Publishing with HTML, as well as Sams Teach Yourself Perl in 21 Days.

CD-ROM includes:

• Source code for the examples developed in the book

• Java™ SE Development Kit 6

• NetBeans™ IDE 5.5

• Bonus materials

Category:  Java Programming

Covers:  Java 6 Platform Standard Edition

User Level:  Beginning—Intermediate

$44.99 USA / $55.99 CAN / £31.99 Net UK (inc. of VAT)

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 19 Ratings

this book is terrible - 2009-05-15
Reviewer Rating:
This book is not for beginners. After a few chapters of reading I realized the claim that this book is suitable for novices was just a marketing lie imposed by the publisher to sell as many books as possible. The authors take huge concepts and then cram them into very short chapters while offering very detached examples. I kept reading wondering when anything would be tied back into anything else. A better approach would be to build a program from the basics, all the way to it's application. That is, to use the same example and BUILD upon it. That would show the relevance of all the new concepts constantly introduced. The exercises in the book are equally bad and the questions are retarded. The questions cover the most basic and irrelevant information. It is as though you read a chapter on differential equations and are then asked "Now, what is two plus two?" The authors are OBVIOUSLY not teachers but high-tech nerds, intelli-bots who imagine themselves to be geniuses as is evident from style, comments, and dedications. I should have taken a closer look before buying this book. Do not buy this book unless you are already familiar with programming!

Tries to be everything to everyone. - 2009-05-14
Reviewer Rating:
I've read half of this book so far, but I do not feel I've gotten as much info as I should have. Before reading this book, I read Sam's Teach Yourself PHP, MySQL and Apache by Julie C Meloni. I really liked that book and had high hopes for this book.

The problem I have with this book is that it just does not effectively convey the information that is necessary to write your own code. While reading the book, I frequently feel like the author is teaching as though I know the things he knows already. As such, certain points seem to be glossed. Syntax usage is used in some examples, but not in others with little to no explanation as to why things are used in some places but not others. It all feels like a novice review rather than a beginner's book.

Even worse, the subject material feels as though it's in the wrong order. For instance, an early chapter is devoted to exceptions and error catching, which seems entirely counter-productive to learning the basics of Java and coding. Why look at exceptions when I can barely code enough to create the exceptions that are thrown and caught? Meanwhile, more simple subjects are referenced in as short a time as possible, which prevents them from being fleshed out fully.

Finally, certain subjects are described as important, but require reading chapters that are far in the future to fully know or understand their importance. I know this left me as the reader somewhat empty as if I had just wasted my time.

There is a decided lack of depth to the subject matter. Things are rushed or they're not fully explained. FOr instance, it took me 2 chapters to even remotely figure out a difference between Jpanels and Jframes. I had to go to remote sources to fully understand what interfaces are.

Shortcuts are frequently taken in the code examples. While a shortcut is nothing bad, it makes the code far more difficult to read and comprehend. It also makes the structure difficult to visualize.

With the aforementioned book by Meloni that I read, I was writing easy PHP scripts in a short period of time. I am not a programming moron. This book, however, just has not imparted enough information for me to feel that the read was worthwhile.

It's a good book - 2009-03-28
Reviewer Rating:
I bought various books about Java, but this is the best.
I learn some java with this book, and if i have a doubt,
i just consult the book to clear my doubts.

Thanks.

Good introduction to Java Fundamentals - 2009-03-22
Reviewer Rating:
This is a good book for a beginner who is just approaching Java. They definitely take the "for Dummies" approach here and assume that you have little to no knowledge of programming from the start. The one gripe that I have is that all of the JDK installation and configuration appendices cover Windows only. It would have been nice to see alternate instructions for Linux/UNIX/Mac OS.

Should be called Java 1.4 instead of Java 6 - 2009-02-26
Reviewer Rating:
I am disappointed to find that most of the new Java language features introduced in Java 1.5 are not even mentioned in this book. Among the omissions are: enums, varargs and annotations. Although there are a few pages on generics, the coverage is so shallow that you wouldn't be able to write a generic class by merely reading those pages.

This book should be renamed to "Sams Teach Yourself Java 1.4 in 21 Days" to better reflect its contents.

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