I found this book to be a great refresher. That is, having written Java in the past, writing mainly C# in the last 8 years, I needed to update my knowledge of Java since Java 1.2. The authors(s) do a good job of keeping the material from becoming too dry. Many programming books start with too much theory before diving into practical code. This book starts with a quick tutorial on two programming tools, TextPad and Eclipse, and does a good job explaining enough of both tools to get you started. The reason for two tools is that if you are new to a complex IDE environment, the author(s) introduce a text centric tool (TextPad) and a more advanced GUI based tool (Eclipse).

As one reviewer noted, it is best to think of this book as one, larger book (paraphrasing). The author states that the book is not intended to be read cover-to-cover yet I found reading cover-to-cover was better for me. The material starts with the simple, "Hello World" style examples covering editing, compiling, and running code. Simple examples are interspersed with Java requirements for file naming, class structure, running examples, data types, if-then-else, loops, switch, exceptions and other introductory concepts.. Following books/chapters cover object oriented programming, more formal class structure, subclasses, inheritance, interfaces, inner classes, packaging ad documenting classes, String, Array, and collections, thread programming, network programming, regular expressions, recursion Swing (Java's GUI API), We programming files and databases, XML operations, and applications with drawing and animation.

Jammed packed as this book is with nearly all basic concepts a beginning to intermediate Java programmer needs to know, the material is intended to get you started and only scratches the surface of what a professional Java programmer will acquire with time. In my opinion, there is a good balance of material with a decent writing style. I knocked one star off the review, however, because there are some rather obvious blunders in the book. To my knowledge, there are no errata posted for the book, so it may take you about one star's worth of head scratching to get around those blunders. Fortunately, this is the exception (no pun intended) and not the rule.

This book is "very" helpful. I am preparing for my masters in IT and it has helped me to prepare for some of the more challenging Java programs.

9 books in 1... All it really is is the good books that you should have stripped and thrown into one book and haphazardly executed. This book was an utter waste of $30 I spent on it. I do not recommend this book at all you won't really learn anything out of it. If you really want to learn Java go pick up the "Think In Java 4/e" by Bruce Eckel. I'll state it again this book is poorly executed and DEFINITELY is NOT made for a reference...

By far the best intro to Java I have ever encountered, detailed explanations of java programming concepts, followed by example code. Written in the tongue-in-cheek humor typical of Dummies books, even after becoming a highly experienced java programmer, you'll always keep this book within an arm's length of your computer.

when i took c programming, i tried the all in one desk reference for c. it was a godsend. so when i took java a semester later, i eagerly bought this book hoping it would work the same miracles. it did not. it doesn't focus so much on the OOP aspects of java, and frankly is very confusing. i was quite dissapointed.

i tried two other java books after that, and finally got it right on the second try. 'head first java' is the holy grail of java books. don't waste your time, or money.. just get 'head first java' and thank me later :)

This book was all I needed to learn Java. Great examples. Good explanations with the right dose of humor. I didn't think it was your typical dummies book. It did have the basics, but it was very thorough. Everything you need to know to get started. Even scratches the surface with J2EE.

Been a programmer for a long time but first time trying to learn Java.

This book has been very useful. I think it is very easy to find information on a lot of topics, and the examples are pretty good. Can DOWNLOAD example source code [big PLUS!!].

I love to dip into this book to ease into whatever java topic that I need to know. The explanation is always plain simple yet to the point. A truly friendly java reference for beginner level programmers.

This book does a good job at introducing several topics, from basic Java programming to respectable OOP practices. However, I would not consider this a step-by-step intorductory tutorial on Java - more like a "Firehose approach to everything you need to know to be a good Software Engineer, using Java".

My 10 year old son has no programming experience at all, and was able to follow the beginning chapters fairly easily, once we got Java installed. However, diving into the Eclipse framework in chapter 4 and discussing "refactorings" before OOP lost him in a hurry.

The amount of sample code is extensive, and is well used throughout the book to substantiate the topics and ideas. This is truly a reference book that supplies many excellent examples of how to do it "right".

This is a great reference book for the junior programmer, and I would reccomend it to college students up to the 2nd year programmer.

Don't take too seriously the cover's claim about this book being 9 books wrapped into one. Inside, Lowe follows through on this claim by having groups of chapters, where each group is a "book". If you take that at face value, each book is only some 100 pages or less.

My suggestion is to ignore the 9 books hype. Just regard this as an atypically long Dummies text. You get a decent exposition of the basics of Java. If the book seems long, it is because Java has grown.

The book also correctly gives minimal space to explaining how to write applets. This was the original Java niche. But applets have proven to be disappointing for much serious work. It's nice to see that Lowe has done his homework on this.