This weeks giveaway

[Carl Trusiak]

This week we are giving away four copies of the book "Instant Wireless Java with J2ME".
And the best part... The Author, Paul Tremblett, will be online to answer your questions!
I meet Paul at JavaOne, a great person to talk to. Everyone give Paul a warm JavaRanch welcome.
Thanks to the people at Osborne/McGraw-Hill for the book's!
[ May 14, 2002: Message edited by: Carl Trusiak ]

[Pradeep bhatt]

What makes this book special?

[Michael Yuan]

Originally posted by pradeep bhat:
What makes this book special?

I am actually reviewing this book. As its name "instant" suggests, I think the strength of this book lies in its instantly useable examples. It also comes with a CDROM with all the J2ME and server side code. That is nice considering very few J2ME books do that.
It also covers some interesting topics other books do not cover (such as random numbers, floating point math, MD5).
However, problems: (sorry Paul)
I do not like pages of code without comments. Those code are not hard to understand. But I can imagine beginners frustrated by pages of raw code ... All those pages that are used to display space wasting cell phone digital pads should be used to explain the code.
Also, although its title is "J2ME", it really only covers MIDP.
[ May 14, 2002: Message edited by: Michael Yuan ]

[Burk Hufnagel]

Paul,
Welcome to the Ranch! Congratulations on the book!
I hope you won't mind if I ask a few questions...
I haven't seen your book in the stores yet. Could you give us a brief comparison of your book vs. any of the others out there? Essentially, why would I pick your book instead of a different one? What's its strong point?
Does it just give code to solve a problem, or does it also explain why you chose that particular solution?
Thanks!
Burk

[Matthew Phillips]

Welcome, Paul. I look forward to hearing your commentary this week.

[Muhammad Asif]

Hi,
Congratulations for the Book.
I have a couple of questions.
Firstly, I am totally new to J2ME. Will this book help me as a beginner?
Secondly,Is the approach step by step or You can jump to ne desired topic you want and learn about it.
Regards
Asif

[Francisco A Guimaraes]

I really would like to get this book....

[Jeff Allen]

Me too Francisco I'd like to point my career in this direction.

[Matthew Phillips]

Just a quick FYI. Posts need to be on topic to have a chance of winning the book.

[Ruilin Yang]

Paul,
Welcome here.
Are there real products in the market written with J2ME ?
Last November in COMDEX2001 I talked with a very senior developer from Sun about J2ME. He said the technology is still not mature yet to write mission critical applications. Could you make some comments about this aspect ?
Thanks
Ruilin
[ May 14, 2002: Message edited by: Ruilin Yang ]

[Amir Kamran]

Hello!
Welcome Paul!
i m new to this section, where to start from!

[Paul Tremblett]

The Instant series, as its name implies, was designed to get you up and running. I generaaly find I can learn more from grabbing a working program and playing with it than I can by studying long explanations. The examples I put together for the book are admittedly contrived and not likley to resemble what one might see in the real world (to the extent I know about the real world). However, playing with the sample code, borrowing chunks of it and modifying it to do what you want makes the leap to real-world applications hopefully a little shorter.
When I want to go beyond "instant", I pick up anything Eric has written.

[Paul Tremblett]

Things change and grow VERY quickly in this area. It would be interesting to see if that person would give the same answer today and six months from now.

Originally posted by Ruilin Yang:
[QB]Paul,
Welcome here.
Are there real products in the market written with J2ME ?
Last November in COMDEX2001 I talked with a very senior developer from Sun about J2ME. He said the technology is still not mature yet to write mission critical applications. Could you make some comments about this aspect ?

[Paul Tremblett]

I agree with you about the code listings. The problem is how to please everybody. If the listings are not in the book, I hear "why do I have to stop what I'm reading to go find the code on the CD?"

[Paul Tremblett]

I've not seen the book in stores yet either but I haven't gone searching. Since the book was designed to just get you going quickly, it does not go into best practices, design principles, etc.

[Paul Tremblett]

I think that as a beginner you should find the book easy going. As far as jumping directly into a topic, for the most part you should be able to do so.

[M.K.A. Monster]

About this book.
Does this book contain some software used to compile and debug J2ME applications, I always like those books.
And does this book contain some information about conduits? This is only availeble for Palm OS I believe, but this is very interesting for every J2ME developer who wants to develop other than static applications (MIDlets), but also a synchronisable database application.
Does it contain a set of example MIDlets, so that one can understand about every function without even reading the documentation?
Regards,
Mark Monster

[chanakya khatri]

How is this book different from the books currently available in the market(i.e Core J2me,Wireless Java Programming with J2ME ) Help me
decide bcos i need to buy one! Thanks

[Paul Tremblett]

The software used to develop the examples was Forte for Java Community Edition which can not be distributed but which can be downloaded free from java.sun.com.
The examples are intended to run on all the devices mentioned in the book so that rules out conduits. Palm does offer a free conduit development kit for Java on their site.
As far as understanding without even reading the documentation, that will vary from reader to reader.
paul

Originally posted by M.K.A. Monster:
About this book.
Does this book contain some software used to compile and debug J2ME applications, I always like those books.
And does this book contain some information about conduits? This is only availeble for Palm OS I believe, but this is very interesting for every J2ME developer who wants to develop other than static applications (MIDlets), but also a synchronisable database application.
Does it contain a set of example MIDlets, so that one can understand about every function without even reading the documentation?
Regards,
Mark Monster

[Paul Tremblett]

The book is intended as a starting point. If that's where you're at, you might find it useful. If you've already done some of this stuff and are looking to go to the next level, then you'd probably want to look at one of the other books you mentioned.
paul

Originally posted by chanakya khatri:
How is this book different from the books currently available in the market(i.e Core J2me,Wireless Java Programming with J2ME ) Help me
decide bcos i need to buy one! Thanks

[Johnson Chong]

HI Paul, I will look out for your book and the other wireless java book on the book shelf this Saturday at Bishan Jucnction 8 MPH bookstore. If I can't find it, I might visit other book store. Wireless is one area which I'm paticularly interested in. I really appreciate that you take the pains to write a 600 pages book like this. But is the code in the book KILL or KISS?

[Paul Tremblett]

Originally posted by Johnson Chong:
is the code in the book KILL or KISS?

I like to keep my approach to everything KISS - doesn't always work, but I try.

[Matthew Phillips]

Paul,
Mark brought up a good point about MIDP not being the whole of J2ME. Does your book cover other aspects such as personalJava?

[Michael Yuan]

Originally posted by Matthew Phillips:
Paul,
Mark brought up a good point about MIDP not being the whole of J2ME. Does your book cover other aspects such as personalJava?

I have that book. No, it does not cover (in detail) anything other than MIDP.But I do not really blame Paul for that. The publisher needs the a marketable title. Imagine how your book would sell if you say this is "MIDP programming". A lot more people recoganize J2ME than MIDP ...

[Fei Ng]

Originally posted by Paul Tremblett:
Things change and grow VERY quickly in this area. It would be interesting to see if that person would give the same answer today and six months from now.

Originally posted by Ruilin Yang:
[QB]Paul,
Welcome here.
Are there real products in the market written with J2ME ?
Last November in COMDEX2001 I talked with a very senior developer from Sun about J2ME. He said the technology is still not mature yet to write mission critical applications. Could you make some comments about this aspect ?

I agree with Paul. Anyway, How is the market for J2ME anyway? I am interested in the cell phone would. And what other Markets are using J2ME.
and
What are benefits, that we can get from java enabled mobile, which we can not get from others non java compaible mobile?
Oh.. and is java performance a problem in mobile phone?
[ May 17, 2002: Message edited by: FEI NG ]