Customer Reviews

Rich Client Programming: Plugging into the NetBeans™ Platform

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

 

 

This is a book about how Netbeans, the application framework, works. Its intended audience is Netbeans framework users, people interested in frameworks generally and people who want to know how Netbeans works so they can, say, write plugins for it. Netbeans is mostly known for being a Java editor.

So what we have here is a book written about a technology by the people who created that technology. The worry for readers is there will not be enough editorial pushback against the experts to clarify their language; if they say "that's right" about something they wrote, then who is going to argue with them?

Unfortunately, that fear is well founded in this case. For instance, after a lengthy and rather abstract "manifesto" type chapter (chapter 4) on the (uncontroversial) benefits of modular applications and decoupling of abstraction from implementation, they introduce something called Lookup, which is, basically, a little database of keys and values, or, even more roughly, a "magic bag" of keys and values. Leaving aside the issue of whether Lookup is a Good Idea or not, the authors fail utterly in their illustrations of how and why Lookup is used to actually clarify its usage or purpose. The examples meant to clarify Lookup in Chapter 5 fail every test of good writing- they're chock full of references to Netbeans-specific classes and Netbeans-specific idioms that the reader could not possibly understand, unless of course the reader already understood the Netbeans framework, in which case, the chapter itself would presumably be moot. This is exactly the kind of thing a good editor should have caught.

Generally, the good point of this book is its written by the people closest to the technology, and is in that sense authoritative. The bad points are that such people are often terrifically bad at identifying what it is they understand that their readers don't, and crossing that chasm. The overall effect is, the authors sound didactic and overly repetitive, e.g. chapter 4, when they have a philosophical / architectural point they want to argue; they find too many ways to say simple things over and over.

On the other hand, when it comes to explaining the nuts and bolts of Netbeans, while they do give a good broad overview of its "parts", the more exacting task of transmitting clarifying details coherently, such that the reader could say after they've read the passage, "there, all that earlier abstract talk has been made concrete by a clear and forceful example, and I understand the technology,", well, that's the hard part of writing a book, and there they fail quite miserably.

Its get a star for its topic and another for its timeliness.

I read a lot of computer books. This is one of the worst I have ever read. While it does contain some good information, it is presented with very little context. That makes it very difficult to absorb. The other issue is that the material has become dated as the NetBeans Platform has been improved. Unfortunately there isn't an alternative to this book now. Maybe there will be in 2009.

As someone very new to Netbeans RCP programming I think that the learning curve can be steep, but completely worth it. Each step of what I needed to do would take some studying, but I am always impressed with how little code it takes to get something done.

Some of the concepts take a little getting used to, such as the Lookup API, but once you get it, it makes sense.

I love all the documentation online, but there is no substitute for the Rich Client Programming book. The other books are good too (I always buy anything I can get my hands on for a new subject), but if I had just one book for Netbeans it would be the Rich Client Programming.

I purchased the Kindle version of this book to help in understanding NetBeans, as I am beginning a study of X3D programming and need to use the X3D-Edit program plugin in the Linux version of NetBeans. Within the first couple of pages of the first chapter, I discovered that (1) apparently all of the book's example programs came on a CD with the hardcopy version of the book, and are NOT available for download on the publisher's or authors' websites, and (2) the instructions in the book are completely worthless with current versions of NetBeans; i.e., the menu systems on NetBeans 6.9 and 7.0 are totally different from those described in this book. Searching for info on the internet, it looks like I could go through a laborious process of installing a legacy version of NetBeans (5.5, which the book describes), which also involves installing an outdated version of the Java Runtime Executable, and possibly more contortions (I didn't pursue that route). Since I need to study the latest releases of NetBeans and X3D, this book is utterly worthless to me. Unless you are interested in learning about an outdated, legacy version of NetBeans, purchasing this book will be a waste of good money.

Tim Boudreau, Jaroslav Tulach, and Geertjan Wielenga's RICH CLIENT PROGRAMMING: PLUGGING INTO THE NETBEANS PLATFORM covers the open-source NetBeans Platform, which can be used to build rich client applications - and it's the first guide for NetBeans IDE 5.0, so no serious Java programming collection should be without it. Java developers receive a guide to advanced NetBeans module development, using proven real-world ideas for building reliable desktop software.