Java: A Beginner’s Guide , Eight Edition is a Programming Language Book published in 2019 by McGrawHill Education. As a Programmer and Educator , we have reviewed the book with following Pros and Cons.
Contents of the Book
There are total 16 Chapters in this book with rich content for each chapters.
Chapter 1 is about ‘Java Fundamentals’ . This chapter is all about basic details of the language. It contains Object Oriented introduction, bytecode, structure and syntax of Java programs etc. It also covers history and philosophy of Java. Various features like Portability , Security are also discussed in this Chapter. Simple Programs, How to Compile, How to Execute etc included in this Chapter. The most used control structure if and for is also introduced. Keywords, Identifiers, variables naming rules are presented.
Chapter 2 ‘Introducing Data Types and Operators’, as name suggests this chapter is about Primitive Data Types and various Operators. Various Integer formats like Decimal, Hexa Decimal, Octal etc described in this chapter. String, Boolean and Floating Data types are also explained in good manner.
Chapter 3 is about ‘Program Control Statements’. In this Chapter Input/Output in Java and other controlling statements like; if, switch, for , while, do..while, break, continue are explained. If you are familiar with other programming language then it will be easy to understand this statements for you.
Chapter 4 : If you are not aware about OOPS Concept then this chapter ‘Class Objects and Methods’ is very important for you. This Chapter explains basic concepts of Object Oriented Programming. Various important keywords like ‘new’, ‘this’, ‘return’ etc are explained in this chapter.
Chapter 5: is about ‘More Data Types and Operators’. As data types in most of programming languages are almost same and it is also applicable for operators. This Chapter also introduce Array and For each loop. For each loop is mostly used with collections. Also Conditional Operator (?) is explained here. Irregular Array (Jagged Array), String etc are the topics which are discussed in this chapter.
Chapter 6: Title of the Chapter is ‘A Closer Look at Methods and Classes’. As its title suggest, it is about deep knowledge if Classes and Methods. It includes Constructor, returning Objects, Passing Objects as Parameter etc. If you are aware about ‘Call By Reference’ in C or C++, this type of concept in Java is described in this chapter.
Chapter 7: Inheritance is the chapter that introduce and explain inheritance concept of Object Oriented Programming in Java. This Chapter discuss all types of inheritance which is available in Java. It also explain ‘final’, ‘abstract’ class and methods. ‘super’ keyword is used for parent method calling. Overriding concepts are covered in this chapter.
Chapter 8: This Chapter ‘Packages and Interfaces’ are about new concepts for you if you are forwarding to java from C++. Concepts of Package and Interface are introduced here. Various Access Specifiers are discussed here. Java’s in built packages are also listed here. ‘CLASSPATH’ is also included in this chapter.
Chapter 9: Exception Handling is about dynamic error handling in java. Concept of try..catch is described in this chapter. This chapter includes finally, throw, throws etc concepts. User Defined Exceptions (create own exception classes) is demonstrated in this chapter.