Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

This book is at the level somewhat between "java beginner" and GoF's "Design Patterns".

If you are familiar with the java syntax, and want to learn more OO design techniques, this book is THE one you are looking for.

I've read a lot of Java books and they all seem to hover around the mediocrity of online documentation. This book focuses on the practical aspects of Java. If you're asking "how can I make it happen?" then this is the right book for you.

excellent book. love it. the coding style has gotta go though. name_=name

is not as easy to read as strName = name ( or something like that )

need more spaces in the code also. way to bunched up. this is java, not eiffel or modula-2! so program with a java style....

p.s. new programmers will benifit from this book, just don't pick the same code style.

take a look at Kernighan's and Pike's "The Practice of Programming". also a great book.

From the first glance this book reads like it's been written by the experts. And then you see code snippet like this: (p.93)

public class StockServer ...

{

private Hashtable stockListeners_ = new Hashtable();

public void addListener(StockListener sl, ...)

{ ...

//critical section

synchronize(stockListeners)// sic!

{

stockListeners_.put(sl, ...);

}

...

}

Never mind that "synchronize" really is "synchronized" and "stockListeners" is "stockListeners_". According to JDK reference, Hashtable's "put" ( as well as "get") is already synchronized.

Moving on to page 98:
"Automatic class loading happens in one of two ways. Either a static method or instance field is accessed on a class requiring the class-based information to be loaded, or an object instance of a previously unreferenced class is created via the use of the <i>new </i>keyword."

Would you agree with me that in order to access an "instance field" one must have an instance of the class created first?

In short, I did find some useful information in this book, but I'd not recommend it to somebody who's new to Java and OOD.

This is definitely the best book I have come across. Looking forward to similar books from the same authors. Unfortunately this is the only one.

At last someone has written a Java book that concentrates on object design in detail. The first three chapters on encapsulation, inheritence and polymorphism provide the best introduction to these concepts I've read in a Java book.

This book is great if you already know the basic Java language and want to start thinking more about OO design techniques.