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From the editor's desk:The Final Push of the Year
Sheesh... how did it get to be November already? It seems like yesterday we were celebrating Head First SQL, and now here we are at the end of the year. We're excited about what our authors have been producing, and we're thrilled about what's happening as this newsletter goes to press. Between now and December 31, you'll see three (yes you read that correctly... three) new titles.
Have you heard the buzz? C# programming gets the Head First treatment! Learn the ins and outs of object-oriented programming, the C# language, and the Visual Studio IDE. Covers the very latest version of C#, 3.0, including LINQ and extension methods, as well as the brand new 2008 version of Visual Studio.
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A Taste of C#:Full Sample Chapter
Now that Head First C# is at the printer, it's safe to show you a whole chapter. Be the first on your block to read about encapsulation in Chapter Five!
Ever wished for a little more privacy?
Sometimes your objects feel the same way. Just like you don't want anybody you
don't trust reading your journal or paging through your bank statements, good objects
don't let other objects go poking around their fields. In this chapter, you’re going to
learn about the power of encapsulation. You'll make your object's data private,
and add methods to protect how that data is accessed.
And check out what folks are saying about Head First C#. Andy Parker, fledgling C# programmer, says: "I"ve never read a computer book cover to cover, but this one held my
interest from the first page to the last. If you want to learn C# in depth and have fun doing it, this is THE book for you."
get it here!
Head First Guru:An Interview with Bert Bates
Bert Bates is one of the creators of the Head First series and coauthor of Head First Design Patterns, Head First Java, Head First Servlets & JSP, and Head First EJB. We asked him a few questions about the upcoming Servlets revision and Head First philosophy.
 What can we expect in the upcoming Servlets and JSP revision that's substantively different from the last edition?
 Sun Microsystems has recently updated Java SE and Java EE. The good news is that for the majority of Java desktop and Java Servlets developers, neither of these releases introduced significant new features, so much of what you already know applies. On the other hand, Java certifications carry a lot of
weight in the community, so Sun felt that the related exams (SCJP and
SCWCD) should be updated.
Bryan (Basham) and I were fortunate to work
with Sun over the last few months in creating the new, updated SCJP
and SCWCD exams. I would characterize these new exams as being
refinements of the older versions. A few, relatively minor new topics
were added, but for the most part we took this opportunity to re-weight and clean up the existing exams. That said, both of the new exams
include a large percentage of new questions.
I would recommend that if you already hold a certification in SCJP or
SCWCD, it may not be very important to you to take the new exams (unless you're interviewing for jobs, and then the latest-and-greatest is always a good idea). On the other hand, if you've been thinking about getting
certified, then the new exams are definitely a better choice—a lot of
user feedback was considered in designing these updated exams so they
should be more "real world" than ever.
Like the exams, the new edition of Head First Servlets will be a
refinement of the current book. We'll add a few new topics,
include a few topics that we wish we'd included in the last edition (for
instance, dynamic attributes), and create an entirely new mock exam, as well as sample questions for all the new topics.
What do you see as the most effective features/learning tools in
Head First that allow users to master complex topics?
Wow—we've spent entire, multi-day workshops trying to answer that
question :)
First off, we don't think in terms of "covering the material." In
other words we never take a "reference book" approach to a topic. We
try to find the heart of the technology we’re teaching, the smallest,
essential core, and focus on really nailing that down. For instance
in the Design Patterns book (HFDP), we cover only slightly more than
half of the original Gang of Four patterns. It was a gamble to do
that, and we occasionally get knocked for that, but we're very happy
with the result. By trimming down the number of topics we cover, we
can spend a lot more time on the key topics.
read more
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