Kathy Sierra

When I read this book the summer before my senior year of high school, I was curious about programming. But, I didn't really know where to start. Everything online confused me and I lacked fundamental knowledge. Head First Java was the most accessible technical book I've ever read. They use lots of images and stories to convey concepts that are notoriously hard to wrap your head around as a beginner programmer. And they work. Some of those images still come up in my head when I think about show more object oriented programming 4 years later. This book made my high school computer science classes and many of my freshman year computer science introductory courses redundant because a lot of time is spent in those trying to teach the same concepts that this book taught me in a few chapters. If you are just starting out, like I was, give this book a try. Really do all the exercises. Maybe it will give you the clarity and head start that it did for me. show less

I'll read anything Kathy Sierra writes. I actually ordered this book when I was out of town, having it delivered to a hotel because I was looking forward to it that much. What I got was a book that inspired me to think differently about how I plan features, UX, and everything else for users.

What stuck with me the most was the concept of putting users into different "buckets" of ability on your product -- beginners, intermediate and advanced. If you aren't moving users up in their abilities show more on multiple features at once, then people will leave your product. Thinking about things in this perspective was incredibly helpful for me. show less

I really enjoyed “Baddass: Making Users Awesome.” Kathy Sierra here has brought together best practices from a range of disciplines, design, expertise development, word of mouth marketing, human motivation, pedagogy, etc., and created a grand synthesis that shows how to create the kind of “badass” users that make your product shine. Instead of gimmicky approaches based on extrinsic motivations like gamification and viral social media content, Kathy focuses on making the user show more successful at the larger context, what the user really wants to achieve with your product. I've seen bits and pieces of this before, but never before brought together, along with original ideas, in one place in such a framework. The book is visually attractive and a compelling, engaging read. I feel smarter after reading this and look forward to applying these techniques in my next project. Highly recommended. show less

I am a n00b programmer but this book was very detailed and went over all the details to learning the java language and object oriented programming in general. Learned about concepts such as multithreading, generics, and networks which is more than I ever thought I would! Very fun read. The authors keep java entertaining and I laughed many times while reading this text. Highly recommend!