Laura Lemay's Java TM 1.1 Interactive Course

COMPUTER BOOK REVIEW  

400 words

Title: Laura Lemay's Java TM 1.1 Interactive Course; Laura Lemay, Charles 
Perkins, Michael Morrison and Daniel Groner; Waite Group Press; 
ISBN: 1-57169-083-2; Paperback,1194 pages, US$49.95 Can$70.95


Reviewer: Stephen Ens, "The online education of the future has arrived.
The "eZone" is an excellent example of what distance education can provide."

Lemay Simplifies Programming With Java

The book begins with an Internet address, http://www.waite.com/ezone, 
and then describes what the reader will find when connected to the site. 
This is the "interactive" component of the book. 

The "eZone" is an excellent example of what distance education can 
provide; a broad range of subject matter, course certification, and contact 
with other students who share similar interests.

Online education has arrived. Armed with the course text, the 
participant may move through the material at a comfortable pace 
and review difficult sections as needed, before connecting to the 
eZone web site to take the lesson quizzes. 

When registering for the online component, included in the purchase 
of the book, the participant is given the opportunity to select the level 
of performance to achieve, before receiving a passing grade.

Four authors have contributed from their particular strengths, and 
in a style that has an easy to follow pace that is conversational 
without getting off-topic.

Laura Lemay's Java TM 1.1 Interactive Course is composed of five 
sections: The Java Language, Applets and Class Libraries, Advanced 
topics, Java 1.1 and the Future, and finally, the Appendices, which 
consume 421 pages of the book's 1200.

The first chapters of the book bring the reader up to speed on what 
Java is, and how to compile with the Java Development Kit (JDK) 
from Sun Microsystems in a Windows, Macintosh or Solaris 
environment. The reader is then smoothly transitioned into writing 
small sections of code to compile and execute. 

The lessons are sprinkled with "notes" to clarify important points 
and "tips" to help code more efficiently. At the end of each lesson 
there is a quiz to reinforce the topic that has just been covered. 
Each time that a new section of code is written there is an "analysis" 
to break down exactly what is being accomplished with each line of 
code.

I am very impressed with this book, and with the reference material 
contained in the Appendices that cover the entire Java language. 
The information is presented in a very clear and concise manner 
and the authors have taken care to insure a solid understanding 
of the material.

The appendices alone make this book worth the purchase price; 
the knowledge gained from working through the lessons is invaluable 
and the University credits earned are a special bonus. 

This book that is recommended to those who are serious about 
learning to program with the Java language.