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Introduction to Computing and Programming with Java: A Multimedia Approach Review by R. S.
Good idea, rushed and poor implementation
I've used this book to teach my CS1 course for two semesters. The authors implemented some handy classes to make it easy for students to manipulate images and sound, however the book is rough.
One of the authors (I presume Erikson) writes some really terrible code. Here's a sample of some of the worst:
//loop through the columns
for(int sourceX = 0, targetX = 0;
sourceX < sourcePicture.getHeight();
sourceX++, targetX++)
{
//loop through rows
for(int sourceY = 0, targetY = 0;
sourceY < sourcePicture.getHeight();
sourceY++, targetY++)
{
...
(for reference this does exactly the same thing without the extra two variables and the terrible comma operator:
for (int x = 0; x < sourcePicture.getWidth(); x++) {
for (int y = 0; y < sourcePicture.getHeight(); y++) {
)
The images in the book are almost entirely amateur photographs taken by the authors. The subjects of those photos are almost entirely the authors (husband and wife) and their kids, as well as some shots they took on their vacations. This gives the book a very amateur feel.
The later chapters of the book are unpolished. Topics are rambling, some simple ideas with potentially elegant algorithms are explained poorly and implemented roughly (like the code example above).
I've decided to teach the course using the author's Java classes (which contain a few bugs) without using the book. I'd recommend the same; Guzdial makes the code freely available on his website.
I'd give the BOOK 1 star, but the Java classes themselves are worth 4.