Sams Teach Yourself Java 2 in 21 Days

By Johns Hopkins University

Book Overview

Newly revised for some of the latest Sun JDK 1.3 standards, the second edition of Sams Teach Yourself Java 2 in 21 Days provides a refreshingly compact and useful tour of Java suitable for anyone who wants to master this powerful programming language quickly. Currently, Java has some 2,000 classes and over 24,000 methods and properties. Instead of covering a laundry list of features, this book concentrates on what's really important, and keeps your attention with short, clever examples, many of which use names and examples drawn from pop culture or historical trivia. The first week of lessons in the book comprises an easily digestible tutorial on basic Java, with review questions and exercises that will help you start using it on your own. Next comes a tour of the various options for building user interfaces in today's Java, including Swing applets and applications. In addition to basic component programming, you'll learn graphics using the new Java 2D API. (The older Abstract Windowing Toolkit, AWT, isn't covered.) Material on threading, animation, and sound helps you explore Java's multimedia capabilities. The third and final week of lessons addresses advanced Java APIs and features that extend the reach of Java on the enterprise. After delving into more advanced class design, the book looks at topics like I/O streams in Java and Object Serialization (which allows objects to work with streams). Chapters on security and basic networking (illustrated using a server that generates trivia questions for clients) will let you work with Java on the Internet. The book closes with a chapter on database programming with JDBC. (There's also coverage of the older JDK 1.0 collection classes, which is a little surprising given the book's focus on newer Java 2 standards.) All in all, Sams Teach Yourself Java 2 in 21 Days provides an efficiently packaged tutorial for learning Java, one that will be appreciated by any beginning Java programmer. The sheer number of classes and APIs in today's Java can be overwhelming. The intelligent and concise series of lessons in this book will help jump-start your knowledge. --Richard Dragan Topics covered: Overview and history of Java Introduction to objects Class inheritance Tutorial for basic Java (including data types and keywords, flow control, and working with objects) Arrays Basic Java applications Methods and constructors Introduction to Java applets Building Swing user interfaces (basic component types, layout managers, and event processing) Java 2D graphics (drawing basic shapes, text output, and fonts) Using threads for animation Loading and displaying images Java Sound (including MIDI files) Advanced class design (interfaces, packages, advanced method options) Exception handling and security Signing JAR files File and stream I/O in Java Object Serialization and reflection Remote Method Invocation (RMI) Java networking basics (sockets and servers) Building custom UI components with JavaBeans Database programming with JDBC JDK 1.0 collection classes References on the Sun JDK 1.3 (including installation) This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0672326280
• ISBN13: 9780672326288
• Release Date: January 2004
• Publisher: Sams
• Length: 817 Pages
• Weight: 3.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 2.0" x 7.3"

Customer Reviews

Much closer to perfect than it is to adequate

One would get very tired lifting all of the beginning Java books currently on the market. The combination of weight and numbers can be overwhelming to someone looking for a book to use in their initial study of the language. As more features are added and considered fundamental, it becomes harder for the author of any book based on a time frame to pick the "essential" topics and cover them in sufficient detail. Therefore,...

Great great book esp. those new with OOP

I cannot understand those people writing negative reviews about this book.I believe I can speak on behalf of many programmers new to JAVA. This book is one of the best, because after reading just six chapters, I'm now confident to say I know a lot about OOP, classes and methods. Let me tell you about my story. I bought "JAVA How to program" by Deitel, and after reading five chapters, I still cannot figure out what OOP is all...

Excellent Book for Beginning Java Programming

I am a mainframe programmer and I wanted to branch into Object Oriented Programming (OOP). This Java book is an excellent source for learning both Java Programming and OOP concepts. All of the code samples were great and the authors explained in detail what the code was actually doing. I was very pleased and would recommend all of the "Sams Teach Yourself..." books especially to beginners. I have also have the HTML and XML...

Great book for programmers - especially C/C++ programmers!

I bought this book because I wanted to learn Java and I liked Laura Lemay's "Teach Yourself Web Publishing with HTML 4 in 21 Days." I knew C and a little C++ from doing some game programming and a class I had back in '96. I understand the flow and logic of programming in C and I was hoping I could carry it over to Java (since they are somewhat similar). This book took me step by step, chapter by chapter in understanding...

Great book

I am a beginner in the world of programming. In addition, I know that Java is quite difficult to grasp. Thus, I knew it will take time for me to learn the language. When, I first read this book I had trouble understanding it. I was quite frustrated. However, I stuck with it and read it another time and another time. It took me about 21 days to read the book three times. Meanwhile, the Java light bulb in my head finally...