Customer Reviews

The Java Class Libraries, Volume 1: java.io, java.lang, java.math, java.net, java.text, java.util (2nd Edition)

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you do serious work in Java, then you already know that the online Javadoc documentation is incomplete, often inaccurate and entirely lacking any high-level discussion of the API. This book is everything that the online API documentation is not.

Of course, if you do serious work in Java, then you already have this book.

There is a reason this book is rated so highly. It is worth every penny you will spend on it. I would pay double the price, but don't tell the publisher. This is my favorite reference book, and my Java programming would not be as productive without this book. The book is huge, because it covers every class within the standard library (io, net, lang, etc.). As much as I appreciate the O'Reilly Nutshell book, this is far superior to that book. This has something Nutshell doesn't. Context. Not only does it have all the classes with all their methods, it puts each method in context. It shows you how they are used by providing relevant example code and descriptions. And the descriptions in the book are wonderful. You will look up a class and find a related class that will work better for your needs. I especially recommending getting this book for a team of developers. Leave the book in the room for office use. If you can so afford, get it for each developer. This is like the Post-it note. You would never live without it, even though you managed and may have even done well before it came along.

If you could design your own Java reference series, what would you include? How about:

- An plain English explanation of each class and method.
- Sample code for every class and method.
- Intelligent organization that enables you to find a given class or method quickly.
- A comprehensive, well-organized index that thinks like you do.

This summarizes the content of this book and the other two in the series and explains why they are the three books I wouldn't dream of programming in Java without. (I've been a professional Java developer since 1996.) Buy the book and make your life easier.

This book in an irreplaceable resource for anyone that uses Java. It won't tell you how to program, but it outlines all the basic java classes and the methods and attributes in those methods

This book proves day by day its value to me as a programmer. There are such a number of Java classes in 1.1 and this books explains them all in great detail. The examples are a fantastic help to find out what a class is actually doing. Not only that these examples help understanding the Java classes, they are already solutions to common problems which can be modified to meet your own needs. From all the Java books I bought, this is the one which proved its value most.

For a couple of years now I have lugged the two hefty volumes of The Java Class Libraries plus the 1.2 supplement to every job site. At each site, these three books immediately became the most-borrowed books from my shelf. What is especially appealing is the ordering the material in alphabetical order by class name, like a encyclopedia. The examples are copious, interesting and solve nontrivial problems. There's also terrific background material on the theory behind each class. I highly recommend purchasing all three books (the original Volumes 1 & 2 plus the JDK 1.2 supplement). You'll need them all.

You can get useful information without having to read useless information and verbage! This is absolutely the best programming reference book I have ever seen. Well organized, clear, straight-forward and concise class descriptions, hierarchy, and simple yet useful example code snippets for each class. As an experienced programmer who understands objects, all I want to know is what's available, what's it normally used for, where does fit into the larger picture and what's the syntax of how it's normally used. This book has it all and gets straight to the point.

Maybe it's unhelpful to say every java programmer needs this book Period, but it really is indispensable, at least in the first few weeks. When programming, nothing should really be vague, and this book has the advantage over the online Javadocs (at java.sun.com/products/jdk/1.2/docs/) for having the little implementation notes. For example, it mentions some tiny, fairly interesting things about Enumerations that aren't mentioned online.

On the other hand, the advantage of the Javadocs is that they are newer. I just looked at Enumerations while typing this, and noted that the Iterator interface may be a halfway interesting replacement. Important? I don't know, but much of programming is the accumulation of little things that strikes one in little ways.

And you can't cut & paste from the book, which is a much more reliable way of entering text than typing. But the examples are nice, and you can lug the thing around pretty well.

Java Class Libraries is an excellent reference manual. Most of the methods are given with examples which helps a lot while you are deep in coding and just want to know how to do a particular thing in Java. One of the best code-time companion.

This giant Java reference has all what you struggled to know in Java. Mainly, I found a lot of interesting examples to many classes and class methods. Ever wondered how to implement Timezones? Or how the TimeZone and SimpleTimeZone work in Java? This book not only explains what the JDK documentation left, but also gives you working examples.

What I liked about the book is that it has a dictionary-like interface. Classes are listed alphabetically. All you have to do is look up the name of the class that's driving you nuts. Read about it. And look at the consice examples provided.