Customer Reviews

Constructing Intelligent Agents with Java: A Programmer's Guide to Smarter Applications

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

 

 

When I first saw this book it looked very promising. Unfortunately it isn't. Although this book appears to be written for people who are experienced programmers, it spends time teaching basic concepts. The first chapter is an "Intro to Java" including a discussion about what data types are available in Java. The remainder of the first half of the book teaches simple AI techniques. Why was paper wasted on such trivial topics? If somebody wants to learn about Java they would be better off buying an introductory Java book. If they want to learn about basic AI they would learn more with an introductory AI book. I could understand it if the authors spent a little time touching on the basic concepts, but devoting half the book to them is a waste. The second half of the book is slightly more useful but it doesn't make up for the first half (or the fact that much of the example code doesn't work). If the book were cut in half with the second half being sold for 1/2 price, then the book might be worth it. But as it is now, it is a waste of money.

Following several unsuccessful attempts to get the NewsFilter application to work using JDK 1.1.8, I am convinced that the non-functioning software is a serious impediment to learning the material presented in the book, regardless of how well written the prose. I did like the introduction to Java and AI in the beginning of the book to set the stage for the actual demonstration projects later in the book, however, I agree with several other reviewers that these topics can not be adequately covered in the number of pages allocated. Overall, I was very disappointed with the book and would not recommend the book, particularly given its relatively high price.

The book is extremely well written and it's audience is for the business application developer. Unfortunately, some of the software doesn't work. The RulesApplet was written in Java JDK 1.0.2 but the JDK 1.1.x version is required. Consequently, the applet won't run at all. I am only halfway through and haven't tested all of the other software, but there are no patches on the publisher's web site and the documentation states that the publisher offers no support for the software.

A readable introduction to the principles of Intelligent Agents and Artificial Intelligence.

The topics described are illustrated with example applications, however, as the authors point out, the book does not aim to teach Java (or object oriented) programming. As such the examples do not take full advantage of the features offered by an object-oriented language, for example there is little use of Interfaces, which would promote reuse. The designs are not expressed in UML, which would be useful. Also some of the examples are rather lacking in substance. At this time, we have not pursued the topics covered in this book to see how well they scale to real world applications...

This book provides a good introductory treatment of intelligent agents and their implementation in Java. The book provides details on the essential components of classical AI such as search, representation, reasoning, and learning, and Java code with an example. Agent implementation ideas are provided via a generic agent written in Java, and three examples displaying different extents of agency. Some figures in the latter part of the book dealing with agents, providing representations of the essentials of the Java code for the generic agent, and the three examples will greatly help the reader. The book will help greatly in getting you started in the area of implementing intelligent agents, if you have a reasonable preparation in Java.

Essentially, this book is just a collection of primitive AI algorithms coded in Java with an HTML interface. For those who want to learn some AI techniques, it's better to choose those "classic" AI books. For those who just want to steal some AI source code in Java, it's better to download more well-written versions from the Internet.

This book looks promising at a first glance because it covers two of the hottest topics. But after I brought it and actually spent time reading it, it turned out to be one of the more useless book published this year. If you want to learn Java, get a Java book. If you want to learn about AI techniques, there is a book called "Computational Intelligence PC tools" which does a good job at explaining concepts and implementation details. If you want to learn about agents, I suspect looking into IBM and MIT's websites will be more helpful. By the way, the other more useless book I brought this year was "XML complete" but at least the codes in that book worked!

I'm concerned about a couple of significant mathematical errors/typos, particularly on p.133. The author appears to incorrectly list a function as "I(1,1)" when it should read "I(1,0)". I(1,0) evaluates to zero (not one). This changes the conclusion reached after the calculations. Also, the software fails to run correctly in Java JDK 1.1.6.

just i read the last page, i would like you help for buying this book. How can i do it? I am from Quito-Ecuador, and my name is Fernando Lopez