Review: Head First Java, 2nd ed., by Sierra and Bates

This is the most unique Java text I have come across. On first glance, it looks like Java for middle-schoolers. It is chock full of diagrams, cartoons, fill-in-the-blanks and... well, you get the picture. But on closer examination it is a marvelous introduction to the language that includes all the basic points that other books cover but is designed with the student's learning styles in mind.

Before I go too far into my review, you can get a taste for the approach by looking inside the book via Amazon. Go to amazon.com and search for "Head First Java." You will be given the opportunity to view some pages and you'll see what I mean. Don't be fooled, though. This is an in-depth review of Java!

Table of Contents by Chapter:

1. Breaking the Surface: a quick dip
2. A Trip to Objectiville: yes, there will be objects
3. Know Your Variables: primitives and references
4. How Objects Behave: object state affects method behavior
5. Extra-Strength Methods: flow control, operations, and more
6. Using the Java Library: so you don't have to write it all yourself
7. Better Living in Objectville: planning for the future
8. Serious Polymorphism: exploiting abstract classes and interfaces
9. Life and Death of an Object: constructors and memory management
10. Numbers Matter: math, formatting, wrappers, and statics
11. Risky Behavior: exception handling
12. A Very Graphic Story: intro to GUI, event handling, and inner classes
13. Work on Your Swing: layout managers and components
14. Saving Objects: serialization and I/O
15. Make a Connection: networking sockets and multithreading
16. Data Structures: collections and generics
17. Release Your Code: packaging and deployment
18. Distributed Computing: RMI with a dash of servlets, EJB and Jini
App A: Final code Kitchen
App B: Top Ten Things that didn't make it into the rest of the book

Being a book nut, I bought about 10 different Java books while taking my courses. This is my go-to book for understanding concepts and methods that I feel a little shaky about. But be forewarned; this is a teaching text, not a reference text. But isn't there enough reference material on the net for you already?

This is a great text.