content: This book would have been better had it not included "Learning" in the title. This is not a book for learning how to program in Java. Instead, this book plays a lot more like an overview of core concepts in Java for practicing programmers. This book would probably have been better suited in the "Nutshell" series, but even as a reference, it's a rather weak text because it keeps pretending to be instructional. This book is pointless.This book is absolutely not for novice programmers. You have to have some experience with the C/C++ language and OOP concepts to really get the meat of this book.This book does include a *few* things that are nice for novices to know, but it's nothing you won't find in any other book on the topic.