James Pittendreigh wrote:Any reason why the answers to the exercises aren't in the book? Some aren't code based and would be good to see what Cay's answers were.
Agreed. I'd give this good book 8 out of 10. As an alternative to buying the Tenth Edition of "Core Java," this is a great appendix to the Ninth Edition. It does just what Jeanne says, regarding lambdas and streams. There are a few copy errors, but they are easy to detect and correct on your own (ex: "South" instead of "Bottom" on p.81).
I thought the decision to include a chapter on the Nashorn Javascript engine was curious, but harmless (unless it adds to the population of people who think Java and Javascript are related). The inclusion of Java 7 features "you may have missed" is also a bit odd (did many of us, in fact, miss try-with-resources?). I wonder if those chapters were included to pad what would otherwise have been a 170-page book to over 200 pages, since, at US$39.99, it does cost fully one-third of what a two-volume Core Java edition costs.
Organizationally, it's a bit scattershot (there is actually an entire chapter entitled, "Miscellaneous Goodies" that might have been better named something like, "Additions to the Standard Library"), but it's short enough that this isn't an impediment to finding what you need to read.
When I practiced law in New York, I (like a lot of lawyers) subscribed to publications that were distributed in small ring-binders, with loose-leaf pages. When the law changed, the publishers would send me the pages that needed to be changed, with a list of pages to add and remove (what a Linux user would call, "the diffs"). This was great, because it meant my practice library was always up to date, I never paid for the same page twice, and most of my marginal notes did not need to be transcribed from one whole copy to another whole copy, just because a few pages had changed. I wish someone would publish "Core Java" in that format. This book reminds me a lot of those packages of "diff" pages that kept me up to date with my legal references, and makes a strong case for selling Java references by subscription.
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