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COMSM0103 - Object Oriented Programming with Java
List of recommended books
Revised August 2009

The course text is:

We will follow this book very closely in the first 13 or so lectures. The text in all editions is quite similar but the code in the 4th edition uses java 1.5, so you will notice differences in the code if you're using an older version.

Textbooks and Reference Books

The course text is very good for its intended purposes which are to teach java to someone with little or no programming experience, and to introduce some software engineering subjects including cohesion, coupling, refactoring and testing. It also deals with BlueJ (a special editor for writing java).

The course text is the only book you really need for this unit. However, it is a textbook as opposed to a reference book. A textbook is meant to be read in order from start to finish, and is meant to teach you about the subject area. Working through a textbook is a good way to learn.

However, textbooks are not so useful when you already understand the subject and just need to look up some details you have forgotten, because it can be hard to find the right place in the book. For this reason the course text is not a good reference book, although it does have some reference material in the appendices. The course text is also not very comprehensive - it aims to teach the fundamentals of java and OOP, but not all the details.

For these reasons you may eventually want to buy a reference book or more advanced textbook, particularly when you are working on the larger assignments later in the course, or on your projects over the summer.

If you are already a confident programmer (and especially if you already know some java) then you may want to start with a more advanced book -- either a text or reference book -- instead of the course text. The handouts will cover most of what is in the course text, but obviously in much less detail.

Professional java programmers tend to have many java books, since none covers everything.

Other books

There are a lot of java books available and more come out every year. Some cover java in general, others are specifically about e.g. GUI programming in java. Java is also changing, so books start to get out of date in a couple of years.

Different books suit different people so you may want to consider other books, or get more than one. Choose the best match for you. (You may want to search for them on amazon.co.uk and read some reviews.) There are probably many other good books available but not on the list below.

You can also look at the javaworld book index for a really big list of all sorts of java books.

Introductory textbooks

These are introductory Computer Science books which introduce both programming and Java. They are suitable for the beginner or less confident programmer.

Reference books

The Core Java books have a huge amount of information on Java but make no attempt to teach programming. Vol. 2 is less useful for this course but may be useful for your project.

Tutorials

These tutorial books by JavaSoft are printed copies of the on-line Java Tutorials (which are more up to date). Copies in the Queen's building library
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