Eclipse For Dummies

I bought this book because it's purpose is to teach the use of Eclipse for the sake of using Eclipse. That is as opposed to using Eclipse to enhance Eclipse, ie, writing plugins. It did an admirable job of achieving that purpose. The writing style is relaxed and intended to be conversational.Eclipse for Dummies is about 335 pages in length. The book has four major sections, each section containing one or more chapters for a grand total of 18 chapters. Section 1 is the basic introduction to Eclipse and covers installing and understanding the conceptual design of Eclipse. There is a good discussion of perspectives, views, and the difference of the two. Java programming examples are presented at each step and I would stronly encourage the reader to replicate the examples themselves. If you skip the implementing the examples, your going to get a lot less from the book. This goes for entirety of the book. Section 2 comprising chapters 6-12, goes into greater depth in discussing the features of the Eclipse programming environment. This is where the tricks of the trade are focused on, for example, using the Java editor, code assist, documentation,and formatting helps. Refactoring is heavily discussed as it probably should be. Section 3 comprising chapters 13-16 discusses working with projects, running the code, and debugging. Now personally, I would have thought that should have been up front, however, given the number of programming examples laced throughout the earlier chapters the reader is kind of already given a good introduction to creating and maintaining multiple source files and packages within a project. Section 4 is just a little add-on kind of thing which discusses the ten most FAQs and suggestions for what plugins you might want to add.I gave the book four stars, but really I would have given it a 3.75. I looked around a lot for Eclipse tutorial books, but found that they moved too fast, assummed too much on the part of the reader, and apparently assumed the reader wanted to join the Eclipse team. Eclipse for Dummies was the best book I have found so far for the typical programmer who wants to use Eclipse for the sake of creating applications.

It covers the basics you need to know and not much unfamiliar coding and features you would seldom use. Liked it all.

Using the book to learn Java. It was hard using other Java editors that came with Java books. More than anything they are very limited in functionality. It gets you started on how to download setup and how to use it. You have to use input from other users and google search for learning more. Since Eclipse can do so much and every week many new features. Having access to people that can answer specific questions is priceless. Cuts the research by 95%. I really recommend this book to get you started.

Well-written, full of details and "secret" stuff abt Eclipse that's hard to uncover by spelunking the app. Nice job.

Important Eclipse features are explained , in plain language. First time I see text where someone said in plain English what is JAR, Plug In and so on further.YOU HAVE TO KNOW JAVA BEFORE READING THIS (it's something you know already, I guess).

I am of course a java dummy so this book fit my needs nicely. Burd is concise without being pretentious and interjects humor just to keep the pace interesting-and lets face it------programming can be pretty boring.Overall a very good book.

Good starting point

I get really excited and enjoy reading this book. The book is tremendously helpful, concise and easy to follow. I'd recommend it to anyone wanting to learn the features of the Eclipse IDE.

I bought this to get up to speed with Eclipse whilst on sick leave, but found it less than useless since as far as I can see, and I may be wrong, it is written for the set-up that the author was using, fair enough with a little variation, which had no similarity whatsoever to that which I needed, and, which are in more common usage like Maven. Anyway, when I got back to work I found that they had ditched Eclipse as it was seen as being too error prone and gone for IntelliJ so the book was of even less use to me, like none. Another book for Oxfam...