Product Description
This book is for anyone who knows C, Fortran, Cobol, Pascal or Visual Basic and wants to quickly learn Java. When trying to learn a new programming language like Java you will often say to yourself “Gee, I know how to do that in Pascal”, or whatever language you are currently fluent in, “but I wish I knew how to do that in Java”. This book is an answer to that wish. If you know how to accomplish a task in knows C, Fortran, Cobol, Pascal or Visual Basic you … More >>
Learn Java by Association with C Cobol Fortran Pascal Visual Basic
I found this book an interesting attempt to teach the Java language to those developers who know C, COBOL, Fortran, Pascal, and Visual Basic.
With little text to explain anything, what you find is a guide that shows how to do 50 things in six different languages. So, if you are trying to go from say COBOL or FORTRAN to Java, 80% of the book is of no use, as that percent of the book shows you how to do things in the “other” languages.
While I can’t vouch for the code in the languages other than Java, the Java code looks to be well written and correct. You’ll find examples of doing things like getting the date, working with math functions, or dealing with arrays.
The way I see the book is if you are trying to translate code from another language, this book would help as a guide. If you don’t know Java, you’ll pick up some syntax but you’ll need to get another book if your overall goal is to learn how to program in Java.
The CD is full of some nice things, but you can pick them up for free off the web. Its funny that if you want to learn Java, you’re better off with the free copy of Thinking in Java from the CD.
Rating: 2 / 5
I am a VB programmer who wants to learn Java. This book is nothing it claims to be. One can’t learn Java using it. Basically book is just a series of code examples with almost no comments and no clear and full explanations. It might be used as a quick reference but many examples of incorrect VB code I found in the book prevent me from trusting Java code examples. I wouldn’t recommend to by this book: in my opinion it’s a waste of money.
Rating: 1 / 5
This is a good reference book. I know several of these languages and I can quickly look up the syntax in the book. In my opinion, the book is more useful as a dictionary than for learning Java as the title suggests.
Rating: 5 / 5
A good reference for programming languages. Also, helped me learn Java from my Pascal familiarity. I found the tools on the CD also very useful. I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in Java.
Rating: 5 / 5