Java : Head First book

This is the book I am reading now. The Head First series are very loosely written. They were written as if the medium was not printed matter, but more like you and I would explain things on the back of an IRS (i.e. tax) envelope. Most of the writers are a little bit pedantic and a compiler war is easy to get started while reading the book. Yet, if you already know some programming language this book is a nice one to give it a try.

To me, it is a little bit annoying to read the chapters when they're trying to prove that Java (or any other OOP language) outperforms procedural languages in every field. Of course this is not true. Procedural languages outperform Java in many fields, yet the reverse is also true. The world is not black and white.
They don't mention which programmers are compared to the OOP guys, yet it is quite clear that 'the enemy programmers' here are those that wrote C sources until now.

To me, as a Modula-2 programmer, this is not always easy on my mind. I also am not (yet) an OOP programmer. Still the things that non-OOP programmers are accused of or blaimed for, do nt comply with my language of choice. Java and Modula-2 have great resemblances. They merely differ in naming things. And some things are easier to do in Java. But a more modest tone would suit the writers of the book. I'm not interested in being a witness for a compiler war. I just want to learn Java.

As with all the Head First books that I own (and have partially read), also this one has not been opened for months on end now. The book is written for children en childish adults. The full book breathes an atmosphere of 'us against them', where the 'us' are the Java programmers and the 'them' are the C/C++ programmers. All the other people, who have mastered real programming languages, like Pascal, Modula-2, Oberon, BASIC, Algol, Fortran, Plov, Cobol, Lisp, PL/1, assembly, you name it, are ignored. As if they did not exist.

I don't actually care a lot for this, but if you all add it up, the Head First book:

seems to be written for children and adolescents (in their worst phase)
breathes an atmosphere 'us against them', which does not make reading fun, if you are neither 'us' nor 'them'
has so little information content per page that you can skip 75% of the pages
but you never know which 25% to read so you still got to read them all... :o(
starts out with the wrong topics
is very pedantic
uses overly complex examples
is littered with and has the level of a comic book

This was the very last 'Head First' book that I ever have bought. A waste of time and money. If you want to have this book, make me an offer.

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