The Java Tutorial: A Short Course on the Basics, 4th Edition [Paperback]

Sharon Zakhour (Author), Scott Hommel (Author), Jacob Royal (Author), Isaac Rabinovitch (Author), Tom Risser (Author), Mark Hoeber (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 9, 2006 | ISBN-10: 0321334205 | ISBN-13: 978-0321334206 | Edition: 4th

A hands-on guide to the Java programming language, The Java™ Tutorial, Fourth Edition is perfect for any developer looking for a proven path to proficiency with Java SE. This popular tutorial "from the Source" has been completely revised and updated to cover Version 6 of the Java Platform, Standard Edition.

Written by members of the Java Software team at Sun Microsystems, this book uses a tested, interactive approach and features real-world problems that help you learn the Java platform by example.

New to this edition are chapters on generics, collections, Java Web Start, the platform environment, and regular expressions. Key sections, including the Threads, I/O, Object-Oriented Programming Concepts, and Language Basics chapters have been completely rewritten to reflect reader feedback and to cover new features added to the Java SE 6 platform. A new appendix contains information on how to prepare for the Java Programming Language Certification exam.

As with the previous editions, you will find clear explanations of the fundamentals of objects, classes, and data structures, as well as detailed coverage of exceptions, I/O, and threads. All of the popular features that made this book a classic have been retained, including convenient summaries at the end of each section and Questions and Exercises segments to help you practice what you learn.

The accompanying CD-ROM is filled with valuable resources including the latest Java SE software (the JRE, JDK, Java API spec, and the guide documentation), the code samples from this book, and solutions to the questions and exercises.

The Java™ Series is supported, endorsed, and authored by the creators of the Java technology at Sun Microsystems, Inc. It is the official place to go for complete, expert, and definitive information on Java technology. The books in this series provide the inside information you need to build effective, robust, and portable applications and applets. The Series is an indispensable resource for anyone targeting the Java™ platform.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

A hands-on guide to the Java programming language, The Java™ Tutorial, Fourth Edition, is perfect for any developer looking for a proven path to proficiency with Java SE. This popular tutorial "from the Source" has been completely revised and updated to cover Version 6 of the Java Platform, Standard Edition.

Written by members of the Java Software team at Sun Microsystems, this book uses a tested, interactive approach and features real-world problems that help you learn the Java platform by example.

New to this edition are chapters on Generics, Collections, Java Web Start, the Platform Environment, and Regular Expressions. Key sections, including the Concurrency (formerly Threads), I/O, Object-Oriented Programming Concepts, and Language Basics chapters have been completely rewritten to reflect reader feedback and to cover new features added to the Java SE 6 platform. A new appendix contains information on how to prepare for the Java Programming Language Certification exam.

As with the previous editions, you will find clear explanations of the fundamentals of objects, classes, and data structures, as well as detailed coverage of exceptions, I/O, and threads. All of the popular features that made this book a classic have been retained, including convenient summaries at the end of each section and Questions and Exercises segments to help you practice what you learn.

The accompanying CD-ROM is filled with valuable resources including the latest Java SE software (the JRE, JDK, Java API spec, and the guide documentation), the code samples from this book, and solutions to the questions and exercises.

About the Author

Sharon Zakhour, the Java Tutorial team lead, has worked at Sun Microsystems as a senior technical writer for seven years. She graduated from UC Berkeley with a B.A. in computer science and has worked as a programmer, developer support engineer, and technical writer for more than twenty years.

Scott Hommel is a technical writer on staff at Sun Microsystems, where he documents the Java Platform, Standard Edition. Since 1999, he has contributed to every major release of the JDK, mostly in the form of API spec clarifications and core release documentation.

Jacob Royal has an M.S. in IT and an M.B.A. in information systems. He has written administrator's guides, API references and programmer's guides, and has identified new tools and developed code and writing standards for various companies, including Lucent Technologies and Autodesk.

Isaac Rabinovitch is a freelance technical writer. He has written user manuals, programmer's guides, administrator's manuals, API references, release notes, and support documentation at Sun Microsystems, Borland, SGI, and many other companies.

Thomas Risser was educated in physics at Harvard (B.A.) and the University of California at Berkeley (Ph.D.). He has been a technical writer in the computer industry for fifteen years.

Mark Hoeber is a former senior technical writer at Sun Microsystems. He has worked as a technical writer for twelve years, focusing on documentation for software developers and system administrators.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 672 pages
• Publisher: Prentice Hall; 4th edition (October 9, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0321334205
• ISBN-13: 978-0321334206
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #261,181 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The basics and then some, February 22, 2007

By 

calvinnme - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (TOP 50 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Java Tutorial: A Short Course on the Basics, 4th Edition (Paperback)

This book is a terrific introduction to the Java programming language. It has been written to coincide with the release of Version 6 of JSE (Java Standard Edition). I had not seen the previous editions of this book, but I was quite impressed with the entirety of this edition. In particular, I really liked the organization. There is a brief chapter that introduces you to the basic recipe of writing Java programs on various platforms, and then the book gets down to business with object-oriented concepts first, before it tackles any other issue. Next it tackles the basics of the Java language specifically - variables, operators, expressions, control flow, classes and objects, and then interfaces and inheritance. This gives the novice an idea of how to do very basic programs in Java that include its object-oriented facets. Next, the more elegant concept of generics is introduced. The book makes it clear not only how to use them, but why you would - they add stability to your code by making bugs more detectable at compile time. Oddly enough, the next chapter is where the author chooses to introduce the creation and usage of packages. This is generally saved to the end of most books, since bundling classes and interfaces into packages is not something that the novice Java programmer needs up front, but it is a well-written and well-illustrated chapter on the subject. Next the author returns to more basic Java topics - numbers and strings, exceptions, and basic I/O. It is hard to do anything meaningful in Java without a grasp of these topics, and the book does an especially good job of explaining the confusing world of Java I/O.

The chapter on the Java Collections Framework is made easier by the previous chapter on generics. The chapter on concurrency is well done, and catches you up to concurrent processing on the Java platform as it exists in Java 5.0 and later. Regular expressions will probably be old hat if you are from the world of Unix scripting, but this chapter does not make any assumptions and explains the concept from the beginning and then how that concept is implemented in Java. Next is an oddly practical chapter on the platform environment that includes issues like system utilities and the PATH and CLASSPATH environment variables that you almost never see published in a book. Usually, you see Swing explained along with exceptions, but since properties and exceptions have already been covered, this makes explaining the complex issue of GUI implementation with Swing a bit easier. The book concludes with chapters on JAR files, Java Web Start, and the ancient topic of Applets, which, after all, is the reason Java was such a hot language in the first place. Appendix B is a handy one on preparing for Java Programming Language Certification, which was not the purpose of this book, but it certainly is a useful tool in this process.

Each chapter concludes with questions and programming exercises to test your knowledge. The book clearly explains each topic, has plenty of good illustrations, and lots of sample programs to illustrate the points being made. If you are a beginning Java programmer, I can't see a better way of picking up the Java language in its most modern form than this book. The following is the table of contents:

Chapter 1. Getting Started
Chapter 2. Object-Oriented Programming Concepts
Chapter 3. Language Basics
Chapter 4. Classes and Objects
Chapter 5. Interfaces and Inheritance
Chapter 6. Generics
Chapter 7. Packages
Chapter 8. Numbers and Strings
Chapter 9. Exceptions
Chapter 10. Basic I/O
Chapter 11. Collections
Chapter 12. Concurrency
Chapter 13. Regular Expressions
Chapter 14. The Platform Environment
Chapter 15. Swing
Chapter 16. Packaging Programs in JAR Files
Chapter 17. Java Web Start
Chapter 18. Applets

33 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Much more than I expected, October 28, 2006

By 

David O'Meara "CodeRanch Sheriff" (Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Java Tutorial: A Short Course on the Basics, 4th Edition (Paperback)

This book is based on the tutorials available on the Java site, but I found this didn't worry me at all as I read the book.

I have always been impressed with 'The Java Series' of books from Sun and this one ranks well. But while I was prepared to accept a more superficial transfer from the web version, what I got was much nicer. The book includes many important topics that are required to move from 'basic Java' to serious development, and while the collection topics alone is enough to recommend the book, the coverage is a mixture of the basics, advanced, and the "need to know" which impressed me.

The coverage of the very basics is a lighter than in many beginners books so you wouldn't want this to be your only book, but I would certainly recommend it to people who have a grasp of the Java basics, anyone moving to Java from another language, or even if you haven't done much work with Java 5 and would like a decent reference for the additional material.

All things considered, this book has better coverage and more uses to a larger audience than I expected and look forward to having it near me on the book shelf for my future needs.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Useful, easy, contains CD, March 18, 2009

By 

Douglas Wilson "dpw" (Sooke, BC) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Java Tutorial: A Short Course on the Basics, 4th Edition (Paperback)

This book is basically just the online tutorials, but it is much much easier to go through them in book form. I found the book easy to read and a helpful reference to flip through. It includes a CD which contains an only slightly out of date Java 6.x and all the trimmings, plus the tutorials and source code for the example. Better to get a new Java from Sun if you are seriously going to use the language, but the one on the CD should be good enough to experiment with.