Welcome Kathy Sierra and Bert Bates!

[Dirk Schreckmann]

This week, we're delighted to have JavaRanch Founder Kathy Sierra and Bert Bates amongst us, helping to answer questions in the Java in General (beginner) forum.

We'll be selecting four random posters in this forum to win a free copy of their book, Head First Java, Second Edition, provided by the publisher, O'Reilly.

Welcome Kathy and Bert!

For more information on this and future book promotions, visit http://www.javaranch.com/bookpromo.jsp
[ March 29, 2005: Message edited by: Dirk Schreckmann ]

[Corey McGlone]

Somehow, it just seems wrong to welcome people that are already such active members of the community. Nonetheless, it's great to have them around and the more we get to hear from them, the better!

[Barry Huizenga]

Although I am perhaps a poor advertisement for the text, we are using it in my class and I don't hold it responsible for my Java issues.


BDH

[Prashanth Lingala]

Dear authors,
i browsed through the TOC on oreilly's site,[HFJava 2nd Edition]
but there's no mention of topics like generics, annotations,in it.
can you shed some light on this...

Regards
Prashanth Lingala

[miguel lisboa]

you missed page 540, in here

[Corey McGlone]

Originally posted by Prashanth Lingala:
[QB]
i browsed through the TOC on oreilly's site,[HFJava 2nd Edition]
but there's no mention of topics like generics, annotations,in it.
can you shed some light on this.../QB]

Keep in mind that this is an "intro to Java" book, not a "what's new in version 5" book. It still covers a lot of age-old topics and skips out on some things that are new to version 5. Certainly, some aspects of Tiger are in there, but the goal of the text was not to cover everything that's new to version 5. The goal is to teach someone Java, from the ground up.

[K Riaz]

Hi Kathy and Bert,

I would like to ask whether the book covers Java 1.5 with things like autoboxing? Also, do you have any plans to write a HF book on Swing/SWT?

[Marc Snyder]

Hello,

after being out of Java programming for about 1 year, I'm curious what new changes there are. I'm looking for a good, solid intro. We used to use Deitel & Deitel. How do the two books compare?

Marc

[John Wolf]

Kath/Bert,

I really enjoy the "Head First" series. You have made learning java more fun.

Kudos to you two!
[ August 18, 2005: Message edited by: John Wolf ]

[Bert Bates]

Hi Guys!

Wow, what a cool site!

First off, I think Corey's got it just right...

Keep in mind that this is an "intro to Java" book, not a "what's new in version 5" book. It still covers a lot of age-old topics and skips out on some things that are new to version 5. Certainly, some aspects of Tiger are in there, but the goal of the text was not to cover everything that's new to version 5. The goal is to teach someone Java, from the ground up.

We really want each of our books to have a focus, and we don't believe there can possibly be "the one Java book" to fill everyone's needs. So, HF Java is meant to give a programmer who is new to OO and Java a really solid foundation. With that said, HF Java, Tiger (i.e. the 2nd edition):

- is still an intro book
- covers some of the more common and cool Tiger features such as enums, boxing and simple generics
- it's NOT a total Tiger reference - some of the Tiger features are pretty darned advanced


How would I compare it to D & D? Well we take an "80/20" approach. By that we mean that 80% of all the stuff you'll ever do, you'll do using the core 20% of the tool (in this case Java.) D & D takes a much more "reference book" approach, for instance we don't even mention the existence of the "switch" statement. So my opinion (and hope), is that you'd find our book easier to learn from, but if you already know Java, D & D would probably be a much more complete reference.

Will we write a Swing book? Well I certainly agree the world could use a really great Swing book (if there's one out there, please let us know!) We think about a lot of different titles, and we have lots of categories for these titles. One of our categories is "Books we'd like to write after we win the lottery". Swing falls into that category, as does J2ME (although J2ME is making some moves). I other words we'd like to write it but we don't feel we can afford to yet

HTH,

Bert

[Ko Ko Naing]

Well, instead of saying "Welcome to the Ranch"... I would say "Welcome to this forum"...

[Nicholas Cheung]

Welcome Bert and Kathy.

Looking forward to upcomings HF series.

Nick