I Never Expected "Thinking" Would be a Disappointment
Just so you know where I'm coming from, I consider myself an upper-level intermediate Java programmer, which means mostly nothing other than the fact I have had my share of books to peruse in my day. Not just Java books either, but a multitude of books in almost a dozen different languages. Out of all of them, Thinking in Java, 4th Edition, has got to be the worst I've ever read - in terms of presentation.
Don't get me totally wrong, Bruce Eckel knows his stuff and what you will find of usefulness in this book will be the code itself. His analysis is sometimes worth a read but all too often he tends to get too verbose. I've referred to the code in the book on many occasions because he shows some nice solutions to commonly experienced issues, namely random number generators and fundamental uses of containers.
This book's greatest downfall is in the way the content is displayed, mixed with its ridiculous size. The latter of which Mr. Eckel comments about in the introduction, in my opinion brushing it off as if to say and paraphrasing, if size is the only concern in a trade off with quality content, I'll take the quality content any day. What Mr. Eckel fails to realize, or maybe it was the fault of his publisher, was that content display really does matter. There are no pictures, no designs and no graphics(even in the GUI chapter) of any kind whatsoever. Java is a language that most programmers might associate with GUI's, in this respect how you can write a book on Java without a display of an intended GUI design? I expect this of C and C++ books, and even these are more display-friendly.
At only a mere 1500 pages, I got to almost 800 fully read pages, comprehended, tested and tweaked before I completely burned out and simply got fed up with its style. I was growing tired long before page 250, but I did my best to stick it out. I've decided to use the rest of the book only as a reference and will read a chapter I'm more interested in(concurrency) before calling it completely quits. What I need to stress - the material presented is not advanced, its actually quite beginner to lower level intermediate. So critics who might say one is not intelligent enough to fully grasp this book's style are simply incorrect, even advanced Calculus books contain images to assist in bringing the point across. My argument is not about pictures, it's about presentation. Even the book's font is disastrous, as one reviewer stated on Amazon, oh the agony.
I had high hopes for this book, but all in all, the code you can acquire from this book might be worth reviewing, but ultimately Mr. Eckel and his publisher need to take lessons from Kathy Sierra and Burt Bates(even the Deitel brothers!) on how to properly present material.
This book's greatest downfall is in the way the content is displayed, mixed with its ridiculous size. The latter of which Mr. Eckel comments about in the introduction, in my opinion brushing it off as if to say and paraphrasing, if size is the only concern in a trade off with quality content, I'll take the quality content any day. What Mr. Eckel fails to realize, or maybe it was the fault of his publisher, was that content display really does matter. There are no pictures, no designs and no graphics(even in the GUI chapter) of any kind whatsoever. Java is a language that most programmers might associate with GUI's, in this respect how you can write a book on Java without a display of an intended GUI design? I expect this of C and C++ books, and even these are more display-friendly.
At only a mere 1500 pages, I got to almost 800 fully read pages, comprehended, tested and tweaked before I completely burned out and simply got fed up with its style. I was growing tired long before page 250, but I did my best to stick it out. I've decided to use the rest of the book only as a reference and will read a chapter I'm more interested in(concurrency) before calling it completely quits. What I need to stress - the material presented is not advanced, its actually quite beginner to lower level intermediate. So critics who might say one is not intelligent enough to fully grasp this book's style are simply incorrect, even advanced Calculus books contain images to assist in bringing the point across. My argument is not about pictures, it's about presentation. Even the book's font is disastrous, as one reviewer stated on Amazon, oh the agony.
I had high hopes for this book, but all in all, the code you can acquire from this book might be worth reviewing, but ultimately Mr. Eckel and his publisher need to take lessons from Kathy Sierra and Burt Bates(even the Deitel brothers!) on how to properly present material.
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