Customer Reviews

Beginning Java ME Platform (Expert's Voice in Open Source)

5 star:		(1)
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3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
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Mobile device programming is a fast-growing area of information-technology industry. There are new advanced mobile devices with interesting software platforms lounched every day. They provide a various range of programming languages and rich APIs. We can program in c++, objective-c, python, etc. and use almost every functionality that our phone or smartphone offers. But only one platform is available on almost every phone and will be available for a long time. Only one platform provides us such portability that our software could be used on almost every handset regardless of it's manufacturer. I think that this is a good enough reason for anybody interested in mobile device programming to learn Java ME regardless of how he likes java and how limited and obsolete he thinks the platform is.

"Beginning Java ME Platform" is an ideal position to begin the adventure of programming mobile devices in Java ME. In the first chapters of the book we will find the basic information about the platform and philosophy behind many of it's solutions. Thanks to this the platform will become more friendly and our complains about possible limitations lesser. Later chapters explain how to use our java knowledge to write first applications. And yes, we need to have at least a basic java knowledge to start with the book. The book explains the differences between standard and mobile Java editions from the differences in basic assumptions to quite detailed differences in packages. We will learn how to use almost every API provided by the Java ME platform, including Game API and Wireless Messaging API.

This book is even more than a beginner needs. It is targeted for the beginner but in can be used by more advanced java me programmers as well. If you already had experiences with mobile java you can use this book to verify and complete your knowledge.
The only concern I have with the book are very long code listings, often stretched out to many pages. I agree that thanks to them we can see exactly how the full program is constructed and that it is an excellent feature for beginners in the Java ME world but I think that to understand some issues short and clear snippets would do.

The notes are too brief - not for beginners. The earlier book with the same title is better (although dated). This book would be 5-stars if the author had taken the trouble to go into greater depth on the explanation using tutorial-style writing. Nevertheless, it is the only latest book (as of date of writing) on JME. Since I already have background knowledge in JME I was able to follow along with the summary-style writing.

The book arrived ahead of schedule and was in immaculate shape!! Great buy and service!!