I've been programming in Java for the last year and half, and Learning Java is the book I've been turning to most after picking up the rudiments from other sources. This 900+ page book is great for a reference on almost any Java topic. It is well written, and the authors generally do a very good job cutting through to the important aspects of each topic.

Learning Java is NOT, as other reviewers here have pointed out, a good choice for a first book on Java (unless, perhaps, one is already an experienced object-oriented programmer). This is not to say it's overly technical - just that there are better books for the purpose of learning Java as something new. For beginners I'd recommend Head First Java as the best single book.

As a deskside reference for Java topics, I find Learning Java more useful than Java in a Nutshell (Flanagan), Thinking In Java (Eckel), or Just Java (van der Linden). These other books each have their own strengths, but Learning Java has been a most worthwhile addition to my group of core Java books. I suspect that Learning Java would have a much wider following if only it had a different title.

One expects a certain amount of intellectual gravity and reliability with the O'Reilly "animal series" books on technical subjects. I bought the book based solely on the fact that I needed an intro book on Java, and have never been disappointed with an O'Reilly book. Well, now I have been disappointed.

The book starts very well. The first two chapters take you through an engaging tutorial -- taking one idea in Java at a time, and slowly building up. However, after those first two chapters, the tutorial goes away and the book gets very dry. The organization of the content is not well thought-out for a beginner's book. Just for a couple of fairly trivial examples, the authors spend a few pages on the "assert" keyword before they explain arrays (a very fundamental concept). As a comparison, "Head First Java" (highly recommended, by the way) doesn't mention "assert" until an appendix, and only as one of the "Top Ten Things That Didn't Make it into The Book" list. Also, there is a wasted page on optimization and performance in chapter 6, which is about Subclassing and Inheritance. It would have been better for them to focus on getting code running, and doing what it's supposed to do, and leave optimization for an Appendix.

Good points of the book include a lot of detailed explanation on some of the Java API, including Swing and JavaBeans, as well as explanations on how to use the two most popular IDEs: NetBeans and Eclipse. RMI and the natural relationship between Java and the web are covered well. And the 3rd edition of the book has been expanded to cover topics new in Java 5.

The accompanying CD contains Eclipse, Tomcat, NetBeans, Ant, and other utilities -- all of which (except for scripting language written by one of the authors) are readily available from the web. So the CD doesn't really contain anything that you couldn't get by trolling the web for a half-hour and doing a few hundred MB of downloads. (Plus, getting the tools from the web ensures that you get the most up-to-date versions...)

So, this book is another reference work, another way to explain Java, but it's nowhere near the best.

The book is a great addition to my library. While it didn't get all my questions answered, it was very helpful.

The book is a great addition to my library. While it didn't get all my questions answered, it was very helpful.

This book covers almost everything (that fits inside one volume) in Java. Very concise and precise, but needs some prior experience in any high level progamming language. Very good examples. This book help me a lot to dive fast in the Java's deep waters.

I have been working in this industry for past five years, I have been addicted to buying books on programming, The trouble with most of the books is that they don't focus on people who are programmers, They just re-hash for-loop while-loop its really irritating to read such topics in say 1 hour that you can squeeze out of your time. And most of the time you end up dropping the book.
This book is definitely different

Doesn't focus on teaching programming like a text for university course?
The style of narrative is super and free-flowing. It is easy to read say 100 pages per day
The examples are quite stylish and don't have the dummies approach.
The authors have depth knowledge abt what they are talking

In all a good book if your bit experienced in java/C++ or even C
(Newcomers should start with books like head-first java or C++ by lafore before taking up this material)

There is one definite short coming this books some times doesn't covers very complicated topics; and definitively you can't hope to use it as an reference.

Hope the authors write a book on advance java topics that can be read after finishing this book

Learning Java provides a good introduction to the Java technologies that make up J2SE. While most of the sections does not go into enough detail to fully cover the area (and that would be impossible without making the book a multi volume effort) they provide enough detail to form the basis of further research.

The section on Java the language provides enough detail to get you up and running if you already know another object oriented language such as C++ or C# but it will not be sufficient for complete beginners.

But in terms of what it tries to cover as a set of overviews, it succeeds well.

Patrick Niemeyer and Jonathan Knudsen's Learning Java appears in its 3rd updated edition to cover J2SE 5.0. This isn't just a tutorial for beginners: it moves from a basic introduction and application examples all the way to advanced topics such as advanced Java 5.0 features and writing threaded programs. So don't expect a simple introduction - though the lessons are designed as a 'classroom in a book' - chapters are quite technical and Java programmers with programming backgrounds will be pleased with its depth.

I'm taking a Java class right now. The instructor was pretty cool about not mandating a specific text, and I can usually depend on O'Reilly titles for meeting both of my requirements for technical books (instructive and useful as a longer-term reference). This book meets neither of those needs.

For learning, whether working to self-teach or follow along with a class, the book stinks. It makes no attempt to present the topics in a progressive order. The chapters definitely range from easy to hard, but the way it's arranged it seems more like it spans from the commonplace to the obscure without accounting for fundamental concepts that would qualify as obscure in the early chapters. As a tool for filling in the gaps of my teacher's notes, it stinks. The code samples are scant and don't build on a wider integration of concepts, which is something I really enjoy about the Flintstones and Gilligan's Island examples of O'Reilly's Perl series.

As a reference, the book stinks. As mentioned above, it does little to give good examples of different ways to include the concepts it introduces into your code. I wouldn't keep it at work as a reference, because I'm no more than a web search away from anywhere in Sun's docs to find what I need. I have an older version of the 'Core Java' series that is far better. What's frustrating about this book is that it's thick as a brick, but the explanation and examples seem to be written from the perspective of an author who's trying to save space. It stinks. It does a horrible job of explaining JUnit and other intermediate programming concepts, and, considering it's the edition that introduces the Java 1.5 components, it does a stinky job of exposing them to both new and experienced Java programmers.

Did I mention that this book stinks? It does. I hope O'Reilly doesn't continue this trend. Their books make up nearly 100% of my technical library, but they really missed the mark on this one. I'm selling mine and buying the latest of the Core Java series (which doesn't stink).

This is my first book about Java, it with me for about 3 years, and I like O'Reilly's tech books.
Use today's sight to say this book is out of date, for Java has updated to 1.5, but for that days I learn Java, it is great.
And I don't think this book is good enough for programming beginners, the reader must have some knowledge of programming.

[A review of the 3RD EDITION 2005.]

If you're learning Java from scratch, you might as well start at the latest version 5.0. But Java has grown hugely since 96. The book's size directly reflects that growth. Even so, the authors had to make the decision to explain only what they consider to be the minimal set of core classes. Their choice seems spot on. Spanning such key topics as I/O, Swing, Applets and Threads.

To get best use of the advice, you should be familiar with object oriented programming from another language. The chapters are well written, but can be opaque to one who has never programmed before. Plus, there are no problem sets. This lack can be awkward to some readers.

What isn't covered? Advanced functionality like Enterprise Java Beans and JMS. And internationalisation is barely mentioned. Mostly to do with using resource bundles. But no discussion about display issues of bidirectional text, for example. Related to this is just a glancing explanation of Unicode. American readers might say, so what? But readers who might have to code for non-European languages will find the book deficient.

Yet, to be fair, the book is long enough as it is. While it is easy to describe what was omitted, the authors have made quite reasonable decisions about coverage.

I found this to be a rather good book for learning Java in a course
environment. If I had to learn Java on my own however, this book
would not be my first choice. It is rather difficult to read
through though, I found the preface to be interesting.

If it had more examples, and exercises that the reader could work
through this book could be an even better resource. As it is, I
used it mainly as a reference book to augment, and help clarify what
I learned in my course. Still, there were times when my professor's
specification would require the use of a particular class that he
expected you to learn from the recommended text. The recommended
text would have examples of these, but usually Learning Java, 2nd
Ed. did not. In fairness though, the professor may have chosen
those particular classes knowing that the examples would be in the
text.

Lack of examples aside, it did a fairly good job of explaining Java,
and Object Oriented programming tasks. Still, for the beginner
learning Java in an unstructured environment, a different text may
be more suited.

It must be quite a challenge to compile a general reference book that covers a development platform as large as the Java SDK. Niemeyer and Knudsen have done a great job!

There are many complete works dedicated to most of the topics covered in Learning Java including those dedicated to Swing, Threads, I/O classes, Socket classes, and Java 2D. I often consult many of these volumes but I also find myself consistently returning to this book to brush up on these topics.