intermediate to advanced course of study

[Keith Flo]

Howdy all,

I'm preparing for SCJP and am really enjoying it! I'm digging a little deeper into subjects that I thought I knew but really didnt know as well as I thought and some I now realize that I never really understood. However, I realize this is just the start.

Since I'll soon be done with SCJP, now I'm thinking about next steps. I'll definitely start working on Sun Certified Web Component Developer (JSPs) exam. However, I want to become an intermediate to advanced level developer.

Can someone suggest some intermediate to advanced level books I can look at? I have a few ideas but I'd like to hear the comments of others.

thanks!

PS: I heartily recommend the K&B SCJP book. I also have the Sanghera book but I dont like it nearly as much.

[Jesper de Jong]

To get further in software development, you shouldn't focus on the Java language alone, but have a look at for example object-oriented design and analysis and design patterns.

And there's no substitute for practice and experience.

Good luck with your SCJP and SCWCD.

[Keith Flo]

Jesper,

Thanks for your reply!

I'm going to take your advice about design patterns. I'll take a look at the book you suggested (this is the so-called "gang of four" book correct?). Anyway, I was instead thinking about the Core J2EE Patterns since I've been doing server-side development and perhaps a book on Scala

kf

[Nicholas Jordan]

Originally posted by Keith Flo:
Jesper,

Thanks for your reply!

I'm going to take your advice about design patterns. I'll take a look at the book you suggested (this is the so-called "gang of four" book correct?). Anyway, I was instead thinking about the Core J2EE Patterns since I've been doing server-side development and perhaps a book on Scala

kf

Jesper's basically got this under control but I want to add that OO does not write code, you do. I suggest an array of approaches and paradigms, here's something I have not even touched:

/* The incorporation of online learning capabilities into real-time computing systems has
 * been hampered by a lack of efficient, scalable optimization algorithms for this purpose:
 * second-order methods are too expensive for large, nonlinear models, conjugate gradient
 * does not tolerate the noise inherent in online learning, and simple gradient descent,
 * evolutionary algorithms, etc., are unacceptably slow to converge. I am addressing this
 * problem by developing new ways to accelerate stochastic gradient descent, using second-
 * order gradient information obtained through the efficient computation of curvature
 * matrix-vector products. In the stochastic meta-descent (SMD) algorithm, this cheap
 * curvature information is built up iteratively into a stochastic approximation of
 * Levenberg-Marquardt second-order gradient steps, which are then used to adapt individual
 * gradient step sizes. SMD handles noisy, correlated, non-stationary signals well, and
 * approaches the rapid convergence of second-order methods at only linear cost per
 * iteration, thus scaling up to extremely large nonlinear systems. To date it has enabled
 * new adaptive techniques in computational fluid dynamics and computer vision. Our most
 * recent development is a version of SMD operating in reproducing kernel Hilbert space.
 */

But when I do, it will be in Java. Any work accomplished in Java can be cross-coded to some other linguistic if you like it better. ( for whatever reason )

[Jesper de Jong]

Yes, the book that I linked to is the "gang of four" book, the classic book on design patterns.

[Campbell Ritchie]

Another book about Design Patterns is Alan Shalloway, James Trott, Design Patterns Explained (A new Perspective on Object Oriented Design) 2/e Pearson Educational (Addison-Wesley) 2005.