Just JAVA book - reader question

[Alvin chew]

hi, peter, who will be target reader for this book ? is this book for beginner ?

[Alvin chew]

is this book focus on new java 1.5 ?

[Alvin chew]

what is the major different between previous version of this book ?

[Ko Ko Naing]

Originally posted by Alvin chew:
hi, peter, who will be target reader for this book ? is this book for beginner ?

The following portion from the description of the book at the book home page might help you to know about the target readers for this book...

The sixth edition of the best selling tutorial of the Java Language provides expert advice on sample programs for Java programmers at all levels.

[Ko Ko Naing]

Originally posted by Alvin chew:
is this book focus on new java 1.5 ?

Yes it is. You can ahve a look at the TOC of the book on the book home page on Sun Website... We can clearly see that chapter-15 generics, which is of J2SE 5.0 is there in the TOC...

[Ko Ko Naing]

Originally posted by Alvin chew:
what is the major different between previous version of this book ?

I would suggest you to have a look at the site that I provide you above... There you will see the description of the book and the new things in this edition... FYI, I extracted some part of the description here... Hope it helps..

This new edition includes:
New chapters and coverage on generics and enumerated types and Web services, with practical examples using Google and Amazon Web services
Simplified interactive I/O with printf() and Autoboxing and unboxing of primitive types Static imports, for each loop construct, and other new language features.

[Peter van der Linden]

Hi Alvin,

Good to hear from you.
To answer your questions about Just Java, 6th Edition which I just today learned
has been nominated as a candidate for "Java Book of the Year 2004" (!)

The target reader is someone who knows programming, and wants to learn more about object-oriented and Java. It would not be the right book for someone who is a complete beginner in

programming. For that I would recommend something like the Deitel and Deitel book "Java - How to Program". For someone who already has programming knowledge in some language,
I would say take a look at Just Java, and see if you like the style.

The book is current with and focused on J2SE 5, the latest release of Java which we are

all expecting to ship from Sun in 2 days time on Sept 30. All the important new features of
Java 5 are explained with examples, including a chapter on Generic types and a chapter on enum
types.

The major differences between the 5th edition and the 6th edition are:

- revised and updated all chapters
- added several wholly new chapters, including one on web services
- dropped a couple of chapters, on beans and on applets
- changed several topics according to reader feedback to make it easier to follow
- dropped the CD, as Sun has stopped licensing JDK for use on book CDs.
- updated servlet and Tomcat chapter to latest APIs and software revision
- added coverage of all the Java 5 features, (autoboxing, newer I/O, foreach etc.

I don't want to get my hopes up too much about the "Java Book of the Year 2004".
My fifth edition was also nominated for that in 2002, and was passed over in favor of
Josh Bloch's excellent, clearly argued, and well-deserving book "Effective Java" which had just
come on the market. We all had a great time at the award dinner in downtown San Francisco
though (it coincided with JavaOne), and I got Josh to sign *my* copy of Effective Java! I have it
here on the shelf next to me now. Josh was the chief designer for the Java API's at the time.

Cheers, hope this helps

Peter

[Ko Ko Naing]

Originally posted by Peter van der Linden:
I don't want to get my hopes up too much about the "Java Book of the Year 2004".
My fifth edition was also nominated for that in 2002, and was passed over in favor of Josh Bloch's excellent, clearly argued, and well-deserving book "Effective Java" which had just come on the market. We all had a great time at the award dinner in downtown San Francisco though (it coincided with JavaOne), and I got Josh to sign *my* copy of Effective Java! I have it here on the shelf next to me now. Josh was the chief designer for the Java API's at the time.

BTW, Which books do u think are the main competitors to your "Just Java" for the "Java Book of the Year 2004"? So that we shouldn't miss such books for us to read as well... But I feel that there are not much Java-in-General books this year... This would make your book a good chance to win the "Java Book of the Year 2004", I guess....

[Pradeep bhatt]

Does the book cover advanced features of Java Tiger?

[somkiat puisungnoen]

Originally posted by Pradeep Bhat:
Does the book cover advanced features of Java Tiger?

I found description of this book.

Description

The sixth edition of the best selling tutorial of the Java Language provides expert advice on sample programs for Java programmers at all levels. This new edition includes:


New chapters and coverage on generics and enumerated types and Web services, with practical examples using Google and Amazon Web services
Simplified interactive I/O with printf() and Autoboxing and unboxing of primitive types Static imports, for each loop construct, and other new language features.

Companion Web Site All the book?s examples and sample programs are available at http://afu.com.

From description of this book, suport Java Tiger.

[Ko Ko Naing]

Originally posted by somkiat puisungnoen:


From description of this book, suport Java Tiger.

somkiat, I guess Pradeep is talking about the advanced features of Java Tiger... He is not asking whether Tiger is covered in the book or not...

As you can see above, the author has already confirmed that the book covers Tiger. Pradeep just wants to know whether advanced features of Tiger are discussed in the book or not... Well, basic features will be in the book for sure...

[Pradeep bhatt]

Originally posted by Ko Ko Naing:


somkiat, I guess Pradeep is talking about the advanced features of Java Tiger... He is not asking whether Tiger is covered in the book or not...

As you can see above, the author has already confirmed that the book covers Tiger. Pradeep just wants to know whether advanced features of Tiger are discussed in the book or not... Well, basic features will be in the book for sure...

For e.g. whether the new JVM monitoring and management APIs is included?

[Peter van der Linden]

Hi Pradeep,

I appreciate your question.
> Does the book cover advanced features of Java Tiger?

The Tiger release (the code name given to Sun's JDK 1.5 release, now rebranded as J2SE 5)
has been the release which set a record for the longest amount of time in development -
a full two years and nine months!

The reason is clear - the tremendous volume of new features in JDK1.5, combined with Sun's
very open design process, extensive feedback, careful testing, and excellent Beta programs.
It just flat out takes time to cook great software. And I think when the development
community starts to engage with Tiger, they will agree this is great software.

When I started to put together a revision plan for Just Java I was a little over-awed
by the size of the task! There were a lot of new features in Tiger. Where to start?
Where to fold them in? Where to end?

After giving the matter careful thought, consulting with members of the Java team and
other programmers, I came up with the only real answer: a complete overhaul of nearly
every chapter compared with the fifth edition, and the development of wholly new chapters
to cover the big new language features of enums, and generics.

Generics in particular was a topic that took a lot of time and care. There were almost no
sources of information about Sun's implementation of Java generics, but luckily I was able
to open a dialog with the chief designer of the feature, and get my (no doubt bothersome)
questions answered. I worked at Sun, in the compiler group and in the OS kernel group
for 14 years, so that helped.

But readers deserved no less. After all, generic types have been a horrible and hard to
understand feature as implemented in some other languages, so it was really necessary to
start from a clean sheet of paper and get the straight story down for Java. The basic concept
is not hard - it just turns hard very quickly if you start running away with the theory of it.
Luckily Java simplifies things greatly by making generics be (almost completely) a compile
time feature and (unlike say, C#) not encouraging anything to leak through to have a
runtime impact. That would be an implementation nightmare and also lead to very
uneven and unpredictable execution times depending on what code got loaded ahead of you.
Java avoids all those implications in favor of something that meets all the practical cases
of "better type checking at compile time" within libraries.

To cut a long story short, I put a great deal of effort into covering EVERY single new feature
of Java 5, with one exception. The sole exception is metadata tags. This is a potentially
powerful feature that will let you label code in a way that persists through to the binary
and can be detected by other tools. The problem is that no one has any practical experience
with it in Java whatsoever. It's toally a theoretical feature, and furthermore one which is tied
to these "other tools" like app servers, debuggers and development environments. Any
comments by anyone are just speculation at this point, and I felt it better to say nothing
and let the feature prove itself in practice. If/When metatags do start to go mainstream, I'll
add something oto my website at http://afu.com/jj6.

All other Tiger features are described in detail in Just Java 6th Ed so you can pick it up
and get started with the new compiler as soon as Sun starts shipping the final thing this Friday.
Go for it! Cheers,

Peter

[Alvin chew]

just wondering, will this book recommmend as SJCP tiger exam guideline ?

[Ko Ko Naing]

Originally posted by Alvin chew:
just wondering, will this book recommmend as SJCP tiger exam guideline ?

IMO, I don't think this book will be good for the exam, but it may at least be helpful. For exam specific book, you might want to wait for the new edition of Head First Java book, which was very famous for SCJP 1.4 exam...

And one great thing is that there will also be a book promotion for Head First Java in March...

[Alvin chew]

thank you, ko ko , i agree head first book is very impressive

[Pradeep bhatt]

Originally posted by Alvin chew:
just wondering, will this book recommmend as SJCP tiger exam guideline ?

How to recommend ? Have the objectives been finalized already?

[Alvin chew]

hi, peter , on chapter 18 - Advanced input output , can you explain briefly in sub-title Charsets and Endian-ness ? what is it about ? thank you !

[Alvin chew]

hi, peter, i noticed your book have exercise on each chapter, do you provide answer in your book as well ?

[Ko Ko Naing]

Originally posted by Alvin chew:
hi, peter, i noticed your book have exercise on each chapter, do you provide answer in your book as well ?

I don't see any exercises in sample chapter-6... Or is that chapter the only one, which does not have any exercises?

Alvin, how do u know that there are exercises on each chapter? Or do u have previous edition of "Just Java" and you saw that there are exercises on each chapter in that edition?

[Alvin chew]

koko , i check from the TOC ..

[Pradeep bhatt]

I don't see any exercises in sample chapter-6... Or is that chapter the only one, which does not have any exercises?

May be it is not there in the sample chapter but is available in the book.