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 | | Data Abstraction and Problem Solving with Java: Walls and Mirrors by Frank M. Carrano, Janet Prichard ISBN-10: 9780201702200 ISBN-10: 0-201-70220-7 ISBN-13: 9780201702200 ISBN-13: 978-0-201-70220-0 Hardcover 2000-07-19 Addison Wesley Find Lowest Price |
Reviews | ||
Book review This is not a good beginning Java programming book. It is better for problem solving, but I wish all the concepts covered would have contained Java code. | ||
Terrible There are several problems with this book, from a student's standpoint. I concur with the reviewer above who stated that the book has too much pseudocode. It is very difficult to know exactly what to do when it comes to the actual programming, since there are so few concrete examples written in Java. Additionally, the writing is tedius and boring - the authors repeat the same point in many ways through each chapter, to the point where the same sentence is there tens of times, just worded slightly differently. It's confusing and frustrating for students trying to do the assigned reading, which takes hours due to the writing style and really doesn't convey much actual information. Finally, there are very few self-test questions with answers. How can we learn if we can't correct our mistakes? The exercises should have answers or solutions so we can see how we are doing. This is especially true for students who are teaching themselves. If they are taking a class and the Instructor wants to set problems or assignments, he or she should make up his own. | ||
Very Vague... Uninterresting This is a rather badly written book. I don't know what the reviews mean by saying it was a readble book... I found it confusing and the language used is unnecissarily vague. Like someone had commented. The authors tend to use "obviously" "clearly" etc way too much, especially when the subject is unclear and unobvious. The pseudocode is probably the most annoying part of it. I think thats why lecturers prefer giving their students this book, as they can easily set excercises without having to worry about students looking to the book for answers. I don't recommend this book for people new to the subject. If you already know the subject well, and want to reinforce your understanding, then its a very good book. But if you're new to the topic, just read the first chapter and you'll know this book is not for you... | ||
One of the worst programming books ever. This book was used for a 200 level computer science course at my school and it multiplyed my level of frustration by a factor of 2. There is way too much pseudocode in this book. While I see the importance of pseudocode when actually developing your application, I don't think it's quite practical for the purposes of teaching. About half of the book's chapters will create entire methods and classes in pseudocode only to have that same code rewritten in actual Java syntax one or two pages later. In my opinion it just seems a waste of page space and time since you could easily write the proper code and just comment what concept or idea should be going on in real Java syntax. Often times, the authors will start a sentence with phrases such as, "Clearly...", "While this implementation is pretty straightfoward...", and "Obviously..." Then when I start reading the actual paragraph that's supposed to be obvious, confusion would set in, and other choice words come to my head that would describe the clarity of the writing. I have a feeling the only reason why the computer science department at my school chose this book is because someone knew one of the publishing rep's and that's why it's been used for so long. If you want good books on how to actually program and work with data structures on a theoretical level, then I suggest Data Structres & Algorithms in Java by Robert LaFore. His writing is way more concise and I found it solidified the material in about half the time as when I was trying to read this book. In fact, I would say almost any programming books published by Sams' Publishing are really quite good. I picked up Teach Yourself C in 21 days a few years ago, and it was super easy to understand what it is I was typing. I am not the only one who has the belief. One of my friends in the graduate program pretty much said the same thing and said he didn't even read the book when he took the same class as an undergraduate. | ||
Very useful book This was one of the best books in Computer Science. It is organized very well, made easy to understand. It is helpful to have have a book like this; I didn't need any help at all from my intructor to get the top grade. There's also many topics that you may want to keep for future reference. It's definately a good choice. | ||