Java(tm) in Practice: Design Styles and Idioms for Effective Java [Hardcover]

Nigel Warren (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 10, 1998

Are you a developer or designer using Java? Are you looking to do more than build applets for the web? Do you find yourself constantly coming up against the same recurring design problems with your Java code? Java in Practice presents a set of design principles that provide elegant solutions to commonly encountered Java programming problems. Nigel Warren and Philip Bishop discuss the effect of the use of Java within design and have distilled their own extensive experience into a number of rules, design principles and tips which will help you to write better and quicker Java. RULES: defined in the Java Language Specification, these must be adhered to PRINCIPLES: design principles that will help you write better Java across the board TIPS: guide your thinking and approach to solutions Java In Practice: A * uses code examples to illustrate both good and poor programming style A * is packed full of coding examples with design notation in UML A * starts with simple code examples, then builds in depth and complexity throughout the book A * has a practical how-to approach that will help you create new products and software solutions.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Java in Practice presents a set of design principles that provide elegant solutions to commonly encountered Java programming problems. Nigel Warren and Philip Bishop discuss the effect of the use of Java within design and have distilled their own extensive experience into a number of rules, design principles and tips which will help you to write better and quicker Java.

*

Rules: defined in the Java Language Specification, these must be adhered to
*

Principles: design principles that will help you write better Java across the board.
*

Tips: guide your thinking and approach to solutions.
Java™ in Practice

* uses code examples to illustrate both good and poor programming style
* is packed full of coding examples with design notation in UML
* starts with simple code examples, then builds in depth and complexity throughout the book
* has a practical how-to approach that will help you create new products and software solutions.
0201360659B04062001

About the Author

Nigel Warren is Chief Technical Architect at Digital Bridges where he designs and builds distributed object systems. He has taught Java for Sun Microsystems and has consulted many international companies on object-oriented systems design. Philip Bishop is an independent distributed object consultant for various blue chip companies. He specializes in the design of Java and CORBA systems and has written articles for Java World magazine, published on the World Wide Web.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional; 1st edition (December 10, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0201360659
• ISBN-13: 978-0201360653
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.7 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,305,963 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good Java Design Book, June 26, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Java(tm) in Practice: Design Styles and Idioms for Effective Java (Hardcover)

Overall, this book does a decent job of explaining good design techniques to the programmer who is already familiar with Java. There are plenty of code examples, along with UML diagrams to help explain the designs that are presented. There's even an appendix on UML for those unfamiliar with the modeling language.

There are some flaws in this book, however. The book is not updated for Java 2, and is therefore rapidly becoming obsolete. Additionally, a significant number of typos and inconsistent use of terms clouds the already difficult subject matter. Especially bad is the discussion of the Cloneable interface, in which the authors state that different compilers treat Cloneable classes differently, but do not explain what the correct behavior is according to the Java Language Specification or how to work around these compiler problems.

There is some good material in the book, but in my opinion not enough of it and too many problems in the presentation, to justify the cover price.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars THE Essential Advanced Java Developer's Guide, September 7, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Java(tm) in Practice: Design Styles and Idioms for Effective Java (Hardcover)

Java developers who've matured to a point where Java for Dummies and Java in 21 Days become effective paper weights will find this book fills the void in advanced Java books.

The Gang of Four's Design Patterns is still essential reading for language independent OO design.

Java in Practice takes a lower level idiomatic approach which focuses on language specific "idioms" and design principles, as well as coding techniques.

The authors discuss issues that hardcore Java developers have been already been using to develop flexible software systems. Reading this book will help you advance your Java development skills to the next level.

The authors did an excellent job of structuring the book. For example, essential themes are highlighted throughout each chapter, making it much easier to understand the principles being discussed.

Buy this book!

Put it on your bookshelf, right next to the GOF's Design Patterns.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Your (reading) mileage will vary, December 22, 2000

By 

Michael Ernest "JavaRanch Sheriff" (Corte Madera, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Java(tm) in Practice: Design Styles and Idioms for Effective Java (Hardcover)

I've been learning, teaching, and writing about Java since JDK 1.0., but I'm not formally trained in programming. I feel my way to certain programming ideas. So if a book articulates the thoughts that float around in my own murky brain, it's a treasure.

This book does some of that. It's a useful discussion of some common OOP idioms in Java. There's enough UML to illustrate the difference between a design concept and a Java implementation. The book is also brief, and doesn't try to justify its starting point; I like that. Keeping a book short takes courage.

On the whole, however, I was done with what this book had to offer in about five hours. There wasn't much in it to make me think I'd read it again, either. Several discussions didn't quite conclude. And there were one or two points where a continued discussion was promised and didn't appear. Instead of brevity by way of elegance, I felt that probably the publisher's deadline was looming large, and they had to cut bowstrings.

So I had pretty high hopes, and I got a decent experience out of the book. I've been at this for five years, so I'm probably looking for someone to state things in a bold, new way, and perhaps that's unreasonable to expect. For the price, this book's OK.