Building Java Programs: A Back to Basics Approach Plus MyLab Programming with Pearson eText -- Access Card Package 4th Edition

So far this book is probably is providing the best foundation for new users and those needing to understand the basics. Many books introduce certain topics too late into the book (in my opinion), as where this book introduces them early and effective.

I bought this as textbook for a CS class I’m taking. As a total beginner , I would say this book is ok as a textbook but I would not recommend it unless it’s required for your class for the following reasons: 1.There are many mistakes in this book and I don’t think the publisher and authors care much about it . 2. The book does not explain some concepts well. Maybe it is the wording or how the contents are organized, but it could be a little bit confusing for beginners. 3. There are so many better books with a better price.I give it a three star because it did open the door of programming for me.

This book is overpriced. Personally, I find the chapter very difficult to follow along with because of the strange teaching methods the authors chose to use. They show tons of incorrect examples that don't work. I suppose they think that by showing how a person might code something incorrectly you can learn from the mistakes but over all it is just really confusing when you are trying to follow along and learn. Maybe if all that had been added at the end of chapters in a "common mistakes" section or something it would have been more readable for beginners.Most importantly, I would like to note that despite what the title says, you DO NOT GET ACCESS TO THE 4TH EDITION AS AN ETEXT. You only have access to the 3rd edition online which is useless if your professor is using this book because the pagination is completely different. The eText app also doesn't work on iPhones so if, like me, you were hoping to access the eText for reading while commuting rather than carry this beast of a book around, you are out of luck.As a third note I think that it is important to mention that the authors seem to have thought that including inappropriate cultural references to make the programming more interesting was a great idea and it was not a great idea.UPDATE: I had to actually buy supplemental books for my programming course just to be able to understand the material as this book was so confusing and unhelpful.