Customer Reviews

J2ME in a Nutshell (O'Reilly Java)

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

 

 

J2ME in a Nutshell is exactly that. Coming in at 432 pages, this book packs of lot of information into not a lot of space. It is probably not the best book on the market for learning J2ME, but there is so much information in here that it is worth reading, even if it is your first J2ME book. The book is fairly complete, although it does have limited CDC information, as most CDC profiles were still in the JCP at the time of writing. Still, there is a great deal of valuable information in the book, and it will serve quite well as a desktop reference.
The book is organized well, leading the user through the CLDC, and the most popular CLDC profile, MIDP. I particularly appreciate the way MIDP has been separated into various parts, making it easier to find the specific information I want. In addition, I also liked the extra sections dealing with J2ME specific tools, and how to load J2ME applications onto Palm OS, something many other books fail to deal with.
In all, this book may not be the only J2ME book I need, but it will doubtless be one that I refer to repeatedly as I develop with this platform.

The reader from Columbia, SC, said it right: this book is a reference, not a place to learn J2ME. Like the other books in O'Reilly's "In a Nutshell" family, the book has two parts: a quick rundown on the features of J2ME, and a reference part on all the details of the language. The book's audience is someone who already knows something about the J2ME platform, such as how it looks, how it runs on a PC, and how it produces the code you can upload to a device. If you want to see a tutorial type of book on J2ME, you won't find it here. Since I never learned Java completely, I find it difficult to follow the book. If you already know Java well, you may find the book easier to follow, although again you won't find detailed, step-by-step sample programs.

In short, probably great for someone already programming in J2ME; not helpful for someone wishing to learn J2ME.

This book does not cover MIDP 2.0, only MIDP 1.0. This makes it uninteresting to buy it. Are the authors considering a 2nd edition?

Still the book follows the classic nutshell O'Reilly style and is useful as a desktop quick reference.
A good aspect also is that unlike other books, it covers some CDC-based PDA programming.

The information in the book was meant for the beginner. Half the page is filled with reference to classes & packages which are available free on the web on java.sun.com
Dont understand the need to be paying for free information.

The author seems did not have enough material or information to fill the book. A slightly better book is "Java on PDAs: Developing Applications for PocketPC and Palm Devices" by Daryl Wilding-Mcbride.

It is promoted as a quick reference and skims over some areas much to quickly. Explanations are sometimes too short to get a good idea of what the author is explaining.

This book reads like a white paper on j2me... not very in depth or up to date. Not a very good effort from Oreilly, which is surprising.

Should improve description with short
and clear language. In a lot of places,
the text is wordy and does not get the point across.

Just got this book on Monday at Javaone. It was *the* book to
have. It sold out at the show on Wedndesday. This is the best
coverage of J2ME and CLDC that I've seen yet. I cant wait to
get started. OReilly does it again!

I liked it, it allowed me (senior level engineer) to learn enough to get some work done in short order.