Java Programming: Advanced Topics, Third Edition (Paperback)

~ Joe Wigglesworth (Author), Paula McMillan (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

This highly-anticipated, thoroughly updated revision incorporates exciting changes and updates and is perfect for a second course in Java!

About the Author

Joe Wigglesworth, P.Eng, earned his B.A.Sc and M.A.Sc in Electrical Engineering from the University of Waterloo. He is a senior manager at IBM Toronto Laboratory where he leads the Centre for Advanced Studies. He taught C++ programming courses at a community college in Toronto for four years. He taught Java and JavaScript programming at the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies for three years and was a recipient of the school¿s Excellence in Teaching Award.

Paula McMillan (formerly Paula Lumby), M.Sc. Computer Science, is a professional software developer, writer, and educator. She had a long and varied career in the IT industry, including three years teaching Computer Science at the University of Toronto, before joining IBM. Paula now develops educational material on Java-based technology and the WebSphere family of products.

Product Details

• Paperback: 1008 pages
• Publisher: Course Technology; 3 edition (September 3, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0619159685
• ISBN-13: 978-0619159689
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.2 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #950,509 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars This book will make you hate java, November 3, 2003

By	"gogalago" (Sakai, Osaka Japan) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Java Programming: Advanced Topics (Paperback)

As Java is my sixth programming language I have a fair bit of experience with these type of books, and all I can say is that this is the worst I have ever come across. It has no sense of progression and it does not seem to have the idea of learning in mind at all - ie progressing from simple to more complex... It seems to be written for people who already know Java entirely and are wanting some kind of refresher, but its not very good as a reference either, so I actually don't know who would find this book useful....whats particularly annoying is that its not actually an advanced book, but the authors manage to make simple concepts as obscure and complicated as possible, so you struggle for ages trying to understand, and once it finally clicks, you feel almost cheated.

The writing is very repetitive too - by chapter 15 why are they still telling you that "the structure of the package mirrors the file system, so you can find the code for this example in ...."before EVERY single code example? It sounds like a stupid complaint, but I swear that sentence alone is responsible for about 5 pages of this book.

If you are forced to buy this book by your uni or college as I was, my advice is that you read it cover to cover several times, and don't be too concerned with understanding it the first or second time... you need the later chapters to understand the earlier chapters properly. I think the best way to read it is to start with the chapter end summary, then try and figure out the code example and discussion, and only after that confuse yourself with the actual chapter. It is not comprehensive and you are likely to spend a lot of time on the net (your cash would be better spent printing out Suns java tutorial) and using other books instead.

It is also horribly biased to IBM VisualAge for Java, as Wigglesworth was one of the developers, and the first bit of advice given to me by senior students at my uni was to rather use anything else, even javac, than that peice of...

To be fair, the questions are quite good and challenging, but as others have said, its kinda pointless without access to the answers.

The unfortunate effect of all this is that you end up frustrated with Java itself rather than just this badly put together book.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Confusing Book, Poorly Written, August 10, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Java Programming: Advanced Topics (Paperback)

This is the kind of book that gives you a ton of useless classes to install on your system, along with about 50 pages of how to install the ... on your computer. If you don't watch it or read the fine print, one of the IDE's that the accompanying cd installs, will go and screw up your classpath during its install. The simple installing procedure to install some jar files is so complicated that you will spend a half a day getting it installed. And once it is installed the docs, make it impossible to generate the docs you need to use the stuff.

From the beginning of the book, there is no smooth transition about how to use java, it just jumps all over the place. The examples you are suposed to do in chapter 2, ask you to do IO things which aren't even covered until chapter 8....? Why do people do that?

The writer of the book did not take the end-user into account, but just wrote to get the job done.

It is a terrible book.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Note the title -- Advanced, September 22, 2006

By	Paco Llosa "old school" - See all my reviews

This is a book for those who have a solid base in java now. Don't even think about using it as a beginner. I used it in a senior level course and it was the first book I worked with that dealt adequately with threads. Use this to polish your java skills. If you want a beginner's book try one of the head first books. The books that develop progressive skills are a dime a dozen out there, few will bring you into the advanced topics like this one does.