Head First Ajax

Ok, so I bought the Head First Ajax book this weekend and thought that I would look through it to get an idea of some of the material that we will be covering. I had talked to several people (Three to be exact) who had this class last term that said that the book was, to be blunt, a POS. Being fairly open minded I thought I would get it in order to form my own opinion. Well after spending $45.00 I initially concur with my classmates reviews.

I come from a programming background. I currently know Perl, C++, C#, VB Script, HTML, some JavaScript, some Java, and enough PHP to be dangerous. For the most part I'm self taught, having had one C# class and a couple C++ classes, I was able to get enough of the basics to do some substantial development out of the classroom. One thing I like in a programming books is a logical format that provides a lot of examples and code for me to analyze and assess. After opening the Head First book the only thing I can focus on is the pictures...lots and lots of pictures, followed by an illogical and hard to follow structure.

I read some of the reviews by other buyers on the amazon site (Amazon) and by in large, most of the reviews are very positive. With the exception of a lot of people talking about editing problems and the author showing examples that are not possible (1 Star reviews), most people find the book useful( 5 Star reviews). One of the interesting quotes that I saw in the 1 star reviews section was that "This book is not for the person learning on their own" by user I.M. There. While we are learning this in a classroom environment, my guess is that as with any programming class, we will be learning and stumbling through this topic on our own outside the class room.

I'll conclude with this. I will continue to explore this book with an open mind and try to leave my analytic brain somewhere else when I crack the book open. Most people in their reviews have stated that while this book is probably not designed for an engineering type of mindset, it does present the material in a easy to understand format as well as a reinforcing style. So I will try to do my best to use the book and I will provide an update to this blog as I progress through the class to see if my initial assessment has changed.