I tried to address two areas where I felt other books were deficient. The first was in the treatment of the program stack and heap. Most books gloss over this topic for a number of reasons. However, I believe that understanding this topic is essential if you truly want to understand how a program works. I try to convey their usage though detailed figures. Understanding the stack and heap provides a foundation for understanding issues such as the life time of a variable and recursion. Any topic can be understood at different levels. I hoped to convey a deeper understanding of
Java than is typically offered.
The second area is providing examples that exhibit good style. Beginning programmers frequently use techniques that are not as "clean" as might be used by more experienced programmer. I showed both approaches when possible and point out why one approach is better than another. There is one small section of my book titled, Timing is everything, where I present a simple approach for tackling most programming decisions that asks three questions. Part of the process of solving any problems is asking the right questions. I tired to take this approach throughout the book.
Also, from a personal standpoint I get a lot out of writing and programing in Java.