Java: The complete reference by Herbert Schildt Rating and Review in Detail
In this blog post, I will be giving a detailed review and rating of the book Java: The complete reference by Herbert Schildt
In case you don’t want to read the whole detailed review, which I think you should for making a clear decision if you want to buy the book or not. But even then for your convenience, I have added summary at the end which you can read to get the high level review of this book.
Link for the books:
Java: The complete reference by Herbert Schildt for India:- https://amzn.to/2Zt6WM8
Java: The complete reference by Herbert Schildt for rest of the world:- https://amzn.to/3fCIZaY
Before starting the detailed review, let us see what all topics does this book covers:
- History and Evolution of Java
- Overview of Java
- Data Types, Variables and Arrays
- Operators — Bitwise/Arithmetic/Relational/Boolean/Assignment
- Control statements
- Classes
- Indepth about methods and classes
- Inheritance
- Package and Interface
- Exceptional Handling
- Multithreaded Programming
- Enumerations, AutoBoxing and Annotations
- I/O, Try-with-Resources, Files
- Generics
- Lambda Expressions
- Modules — jLink and JAR files
- String Handling
- Indepth on Java.lang
- java.util Part-1 — List, Set, Queue, EnumSet, Vector, Comparator etc…
- java.util Part-2 — More Utility classes: Tokenizer, BitSet, Date, Calendar, Timezone, Formatter, Scanner, Resource Bundle etc…
- I/O — java.io
- Exploring NIO — Buffers, Channels, Path Interface
- Networking — URL/URI/Cookies/TCP-IP/Datagrams
- Event Handling
- AWT: Windows, Graphics, Color, and Text
- AWT Controls, Layout Managers, Menus, Checkboxes, Scroll Bars etc…
- Images — File Formats, Buffering, Image Producer, Image Filter
- Concurrency Utilities
- Stream API — Mapping/Collecting/Iterators/API
- Regular Expressions and Other Packages
- Swing — GUI Programming, MVC
- Exploring Swing in Detail — Trees, JTable, Swing Buttons
- Swing Menus
- Java Beans
- Servlets
Well, a lot of topics covered. So why to waste time. Let us start reviewing.
Content:
The topics in this book covers from a beginner level of starting to learn java to going advanced with GUI, Website Backend like Servlet, developing softwares, APIs and many other topics which are more than enough for a novice to land a job in Java profile.
Not only it has many different topics which it covers, this book has also taken care to give detailed explanation about the topics it is covering.
This book has also added proper codes instead of algorithms like in many other books for each topics and sub topics, hence it becomes way easier for someone to understand the topics and make projects out of it.
Hence, I would rate this book in terms of content as: 8/10
One point reduced for this book not containing practice questions to explore the topics in depth.
I would be reviewing a book soon in my blog which also has practice questions. So, if you haven’t followed my blog yet, time to follow it:)
Understand-ability:
The concepts are in depth and clear as crystal without simply increasing the content to add on the pages.
There are various concepts which are also explained with proper pictorial representations like GUI and Image concepts which might help you to see if you have got the correct output just like shown in the images.
Also, all the codes are provided with proper comments for each line and hence, merely going through code instead of reading the concepts might also help people to learn the concepts.
Overall, you will find this book perfect for understanding whether you are novice/student/professional. This book will come in handy for learning Java and that is the whole reason for it to become the best seller in Amazon.
Hence, I will rate this book in terms of readers understand-ability as: 10/10
Visual Representation:
As said above, this book has the required visual representations in form of output screenshots or flowcharts for easy understanding for readers.
It neither has too many images and nor does it lack at points where it is required to.
Hence, I would rate this book for visual representation as: 10/10
Coding:
Code with proper comments is given for each topic and sub-topics.
Some have just the functions written while some have full code from importing java libraries to the end written and explained.
This book overtakes other books in terms of coding added instead of just algorithms and pseudo-code.
Although there are not much coding questions for readers to practice.
Hence, I will rate this book in terms of coding level as: 8/10
Pros of this book:
- Vast number of concepts covered.
- All the topics are on point with code and output screenshots making it easier to understand.
- Best book for beginners to start with.
Cons of this book:
- No practice questions provided.
- Useless for students/developers with concept knowledge to improve their skills.
Summary:-
For those readers of the blog who didn’t read the whole post, this book is perfect and most suitable for beginners to start with and a perfect handbook for any java developer.
It covers all the concepts for basic to advanced level good enough for anyone to land a job in Java dev domain.
It is recommended to buy this book if you want to learn java and not if you wish to practice questions because this book has none.
Overall Rating:-
There are many books with more detailed explanation for the same topics but this book has perfect explanations with perfect code and hence, I would rate this book as:- 9/10
Link for the book in case you wish to buy:-
Java: The complete reference by Herbert Schildt for India:- https://amzn.to/2Zt6WM8
Java: The complete reference by Herbert Schildt for rest of the world:- https://amzn.to/3fCIZaY
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Originally published at http://codenomous.wordpress.com on July 15, 2020.
