HFS book

[Ice Penov]

Hi all,

I first appologize if this is not the place to post this message, but most og the people around here use this book(Head First Servlets&JSP).

When I decided to get my hands on SCWCD, I came to this forum and I had an impression that everyone uses this book. I got very good compliments from everyone about this book.

However, today I received my sample of this book. I was shocked when I opened it. No one has warned me about "how illustrative" this book is. I mean WOW! Is this the book that everyone is talking about?!

I hope the fuzz about this book is not about the "attractiveness" of this book. The contents matters. To me, it doesn't matter if the contents is in million colors and styles or it is rolled in a toilet paper, as long it is valuable.

This shock maybe occured cause I was getting used to books like from the Core series(Core Java, Core Servlets&JSP). I hope i'll remember this Head First series as a good one.

Regards,
Ice

P.S., I also know that this "stylish" writing will motivate many to join the Java technology, which is a good thing!

[Anand Wadhwani]

Hello Ice,

I would still say that the book HFSJ is a perfect book from "certification-content" point of view.

I also like serious books specially from Wrox publications. Oreilly Servlet programming is a book noone can write similar book ever again. But when it comes to certification, you need a book which tells you.. hey dont worry if you dont understand much this, this will NOT come in exam.. at other places the book will tell you.. Hey, if you dont understand and remember each and every bit of coming 5 pages you would have hard time in the exam.

I guess you got my message. Hope you have a nice time reading the book.

Apart from above objective of writing such book, the very good thing behind this book is you can imagine somewhere yourself in the book.. a JSP writer.. or core model developer (MVC) or application deployer.. or a client-customer or a website vendor etc etc. These are all the character keep coming all along the book.. it's like watching a movie ... dont you like wathcing movies?

Have fun and eventually get certified too!
[ July 04, 2005: Message edited by: Anand Wadhwani ]

[Todd Farmer]

No question about it, this is the book to get for SCWCD certification. I have a number of other books on related subjects, such as Struts or JSTL, but this is the only book I used to prepare for the exam.

Todd Farmer

[Kedar Dravid]

No doubt about it, HFSJ is a clear winner.
Also, you might want o try SCWCD Exam Study Kit (310-081).
This book covers the topic on Custom tags (Simple and Classic) more comprehensivley. I found the coverage of this topic in this book better than the one in HFSJ.

[Nicky Eng]

latest HFSJ book is which version...can give me whole name of the book? thanks.

[Ice Penov]

Hi Nicky,

We are talking about the book Head First Servlets & JSP by Kathy Sierra,Bert Bates and Bryan Basham--August 2004-First Edition. It covers the latest 1.4 exam.

To the other guys--thanks for the feedback. I'll give my review after I get in depth in this book. I just hope that stylish design is not the best side of this book.

See ya,
Ice