How good are the Head First Java books

[zilvar]

....in terms of actual practical programming?

To make the question more specific, I've gone through the HFJ book
(first edition) and thought I had a reasonable grasp of some of the
beginning java concepts. Fast forward several months with no real time
to put the information to use. I download Java SE 5, with the NetBeans
5 IDE (pretty nifty, that), and start to construct a frame to play
with.

Here's where I start running into problems, and it's taken me most of a
day to figure out why. The HFJ book's author constructs his guis with
local variables in his 'go' function, and Netbeans wants to construct
them as Private globals to the gui .java file.

Is that best practice at this point, and if so, can someone suggest a
decent tutorial on how construct a functional gui in netbeans? I found
the one on using the gui editor, but the end product is toothless

Thanks

 

[IchBin]

...in terms of actual practical programming?

To make the question more specific, I've gone through the HFJ book
(first edition) and thought I had a reasonable grasp of some of the
beginning java concepts. Fast forward several months with no real time
to put the information to use. I download Java SE 5, with the NetBeans
5 IDE (pretty nifty, that), and start to construct a frame to play
with.

Here's where I start running into problems, and it's taken me most of a
day to figure out why. The HFJ book's author constructs his guis with
local variables in his 'go' function, and Netbeans wants to construct
them as Private globals to the gui .java file.

Is that best practice at this point, and if so, can someone suggest a
decent tutorial on how construct a functional gui in netbeans? I found
the one on using the gui editor, but the end product is toothless

Thanks

I have read their book on Design Patterns and found it very good.

 

[Tim B]

...in terms of actual practical programming?

I have Head First Servlets & Jsp and Head First Design Patterns. They're
both quite good.

 

[Mark Space]

I have Head First Servlets & Jsp

I've read through this one, and I think it's excellent for what it is:
a beginner's guide to Servlets and JSP. It is not a substitute for
reading the manual or the spec, but it's darn close imho.

The others I can't swear to, but at a guess being compatible with
NetBeans is probably a best practice, if your going to be using the
thing. With out knowing more about these "go" functions, I can't
say. There's a lot of stuff in HFSJ though that strikes me as obviously
newbie code for newbie's sakes, and I wouldn't consider putting it in
production.

 

[noname]

...in terms of actual practical programming?

To make the question more specific, I've gone through the HFJ book
(first edition) and thought I had a reasonable grasp of some of the
beginning java concepts. Fast forward several months with no real time
to put the information to use. I download Java SE 5, with the NetBeans
5 IDE (pretty nifty, that), and start to construct a frame to play
with.

Here's where I start running into problems, and it's taken me most of a
day to figure out why. The HFJ book's author constructs his guis with
local variables in his 'go' function, and Netbeans wants to construct
them as Private globals to the gui .java file.

Is that best practice at this point, and if so, can someone suggest a
decent tutorial on how construct a functional gui in netbeans? I found
the one on using the gui editor, but the end product is toothless

Thanks

I found Head First Design Patterns, pretty good. Without it, i would have
hardly understood the philosophy behind java (design pattern). And it's a
pretty easy book to read, well written, very well explained.