Reviewed by Charles Sheaffer, Lecturer, University of North Carolina at Asheville on 2/1/18 However, readers shouldn’t assume that all of the teaching tools in BlueJ will be utilized (at least in part 1). Conceivably and with some difficulty, the book could even be used in a class with a different editor. I’m not saying this is a bad thing, necessarily. While the title of the book is “Java with BlueJ”, the features of BlueJ aren’t exhaustively explored. The book doesn’t use examples that are specific to particular races, ethnicities, or backgrounds, with the exception of very few that include references to gender, but those that do are inclusive (the data type used is literally non binary). There could be improvements with some of the figures, but overall the book is easy to navigate.Ī couple minor errors, though most are typos (as already mentioned). Figures are helpful and well positioned on the pages.
#Statistics bluej program code
The code is well formatted with line numbers and helpful syntax coloring. The format of the book is very straight-forward. This is also important in an introductory text where students are feeling out the practice of programming at the same time that they’re reading about it. For instance, care was taken to discuss variable naming at the point that variables are introduced and the purpose for indenting if/else structures is specifically addressed.Įxercises are spread throughout the book at thoughtful intervals. I liked that style conventions were addressed as concepts come up, and not all at once later in the book. After reading through a complete chapter, there are few questions left unanswered. Other times some concepts are introduced a bit too early (for example, literals of many types are introduced before the data types are), though some degree of this is hard to avoid, especially in the beginning, when many concepts are intertwined. As an introductory programming book, it might be more helpful to first introduce the reader to programming, generally, even though the book focuses on Java, specifically. The introduction jumps right in to Java history and architecture. Non-essential chapters of the book are identified early. The book does well dividing topics in to small, logical, self-contained sections with relevant examples. After the first few examples, the reader will recognize the format and what they should expect from BlueJ if they work through an example themselves. The language and delivery of concepts is consistent throughout the book. With the exception of a few concepts or terms in the beginning chapters, terms are carefully introduced. Examples are worked through slowly for an introductory programmer. Sentences are not complicated and the language is concise. The language of the book is easy to follow. Other changes will likely also be easy to integrate with the existing text.
The section on variables could be fairly simply updated to incorporate the “var” keyword if the author chooses to do so in the future.
#Statistics bluej program update
Since the book doesn’t take great advantage of BlueJ’s codpad, the jshell update is mostly irrelevant. That won’t break anything that’s in the book and no static book can account for these changes anyway. The book also uses BlueJ in a way that is likely to stay fairly consistent, but with recent updates to the JDK (such as jshell in JDK 9 and “var” in Java 10), tools like BlueJ may be updated to incorporate these beginner-friendly features.
Since this focuses on basic Java concepts that aren’t likely to change, this aspect of the book will be long lived. The primary content is related to the reader accurately. There are some minor typos with snippets of program syntax, but these can lead to confusion. comments aren’t given a complete explanation before being used in example programs) The coverage of these topics is complete enough to answer most questions an intro student may come up with when introduced to the basics, but there are some notable exceptions (ex. For the topics that are covered, the book is quite exhaustive, covering small details of syntax that students may or may not encounter in their first year or two.
There are, of course, many Java topics not covered by this book, but the book does a good job of covering important concepts for an introductory programming course. Reviewed by Joseph Kendall-Morwick, Assistant Professor, Missouri Western State University on 5/21/18 Journalism, Media Studies & Communications.
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