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Murach's Beginning Java with Eclipse

 
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Author/s    : Joel Murach, Michael Urban
Publisher   : Mike Murach & Associates
Category   : Beginning Java
Review by : Jeanne Boyarsky
Rating        : 9 horseshoes

"Murach's Beginning Java with Eclipse" teaches Java and your first IDE (integrated development environment) at the same time. Like all Murach books, the book is heavy (600+ pages) and contains good review/labs at the end of each chapter. Including those that have you modify existing code. When I feature was introduced in a certain version of Java, the book points out which one.

I really liked the intro including types of applications and keywords. I like the covering Eclipse as needed for specific concepts including perspectives, code completion and the debugger. Similarly, good programming idioms are covered so readers can see patterns. I particularly liked how the code listings highlighted the relevant parts. I also liked the UML class diagram introduction.

This book is equivalent to Murach's Beginning Java with NetBeans book. I was happy to see they added hashCode() something I noted as missing in my NetBeans book review.

I recommend either this or the NetBeans book as an intro book. Eclipse is more marketable than NetBeans so I lean towards preferring this one of the two.

I reviewed the print version of the NetBeans book and the e-book of the Eclipse book (since so much of the content was the same.) I recommend the print book. Murach's books work better in print because of the paired pages format.



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Disclosure: I received a copy of this book from the publisher for reviewing it on behalf of CodeRanch.

More info at Amazon.com
 
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Jeanne,
Great review

I"m using the book right now.  I'm on Chapter 4.   Exercise 2.  It says to Import trhe project named CHO4_Ex2_Area and Perimeter.  It does not contain this.  An earlier example of the book had an example using dealing with a similar example.  I don't know if there was something special about the new example to use as a starting point.

The book is very detailed and explains things well.  I like the two page format with discussion on the left and example code and diagrams on the right.  

There are tiny things in the book that make me get stuck.   If a person knows the material they can recover.  As a newbie to many topics I don't know when the book is missing needed information.  The users of this forum assisted me a few times.  Looking back I would not have solved this on my own.

I think that the book needed to be QA'd by someone who does not know the material at all and then add data to keep the reader on track.

Disclosure:  I purchased the book used from Amazon.  I paid about $12.  The author is not making any money off of me.  My hope is that if Murach sees this post that he knows everything is fantastic about the book and my critique is meant to be completely constructive.

Thanks,

Kevin
 
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