Customer Reviews

Advanced Java: Idioms, Pitfalls, Styles and Programming Tips (Prentice Hall PTR Java)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I was hoping for a Java equivalent of Coplien's Advanced C++ book. Instead, I got a couple of pages of basic Java, plus a few hundred of some windowing software that the author developed as a thesis.

Don't be fooled by the title. Spend your money elsewhere.

Where's the 'Advanced Programming'? No reasonable suggestions for the pit falls. Just trying to get in on the hype.

The first 60 or so pages of the book are worth reading...once. They are hardly "advanced" concepts, though. The remainder of the book is worthless, I'm sorry to say. I thought too that this would be a book like "Effective C++" by Scott Meyers. Save your money and borrow a friend's copy and read the first 60 pages and give the book back.

This book is really not worth buying, he spends far too much time talking about his own java packages which were at the time out of date(early 97) never mind now. The rest of the book is really not much use for anyone, beginner or expert.

First you can read how to code in Java as it was thought for tiny devices there RAM and CPU has not much to help. This book is very compact list of "how to" for people who do not know much about Java and programming for tiny devices.

Secondary this book has very nice LTK (a lightweight alternative to AWT) for GUI development. This toolkit describes base architecture for GUI programming and illustrates it with complete "easy to read" code. That is a very "little" code base which beginners can use to understand how to make GUI toolkit.

This book is excellent for students who want to understand basics in Java and AWT/SWING GUI architecture. (unfortunately this is not compatible with SWT used in Eclipse)

I agree that C++ part and debugger part of this book has not much to tell today.

My conclusion is: buy this book and give to some who want to understand base in modern Java and Java-GUI development. Tell to read only Java and LTK part. This is probably most compact book you can find on market about those topics and - it is very easy to read.

Big thanks to Chris for this book, I have bought 10+ ex of this and use those all time to teach my employees to keep things simple and code efficient.

I'd give it 0 stars if I could. The author spends too much time comparing Java to C++, complaining about the fact that Java isn't C++, trying to implement C++ ideas in Java, etc., instead of taking the time to understand the Java conceptual model before writing a book.

In fairness to the author, there were some limitations and inconveniences in the early days of Java. However, that makes this book doubly dangerous now, because the combination of complaints over features not handled well by the author and features improved in subsequent releases would be hazardous to a correct understanding of the current state of Java. If this book had a time, it's already passed.

It's rare that I throw away books, but this one just hit the can. Mr. Laffra spends the vast majority of this book pointing out Java's shortcomings (a worthwhile effort) without providing useful ways to circumvent them (which makes it pointless). The only reason I didn't rate it a "1" was that it didn't have the blatant errors so common in the fodder that is Java books right now. I hoped to find a book along the lines of "Effective C++" that would show interesting and effective uses of the Java language: instead, I got a wish-list from an author that seems to have no intention of making use of the GOOD things Java provides. If you want to know how to effectively use System.out to print debug statements (or better yet, how to better write the JVM so it supports debugging better), or if you want a vision of "how great Java could have been", then this book is for you. If you want helpful insights into complex Java issues, then I suggest Doug Lea's "Concurrent Programming in Java" (probably the best concurrency book for any language), Andreas Vogel's Java/CORBA Book (not Orfali's) for distributed objects, and the Nutshell book as a reference.