Customer Reviews

Java Thin-Client Programming for the Network Computing Environment

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

 

 

For one of the leading company in thin-client programming with Java this is a really bad book. The only thing that is described good enough are the IBM products. This book was a real waste of a lot of money!

The book starts at a level where you already have to know what is coming. Every topic is presented with technical details, but so brief that you can only guess how to use it in a project. I wonder who the book is written for: It is too technical for a manager and not technical enough for a developer.

To label this book as useless would be complimenting it. This is because it is badly written that it will actually hold you back from learning Java.

I wanted to write an application that was a thin client. However if I followed the books definition of a thin client I would not have gotten very far. The book defines an application that is a thin client as: "An application that is faster than a normal application because it is not fat and ugly."

I found countless typos and logical errors. At one point in the book the page numbers actually start counting backwards.

My advice: If you have to read this book make sure you have a punching bag handy because you're going to want to punch something!

I think the other reviews are a bit harsh. This book does not have a lot of code in it or enough detail for it to be your sole resource while programming a thin client application, but it provides a good (although probably a little dated) overview of many network communication options you have. That is exactly what I wanted from the book.

I am a java programmer, but I do not have a lot of experience writing server applications or using enterprise frameworks. I wanted an overview of my options for communication with a client and this book provided it without making me decipher large sections of code.

That being said, I found large portions of the book useless for me, so I just skipped over them.