Java 1.5 Tiger : A Developer's Notebook by David Flanagan, Brett McLaughlin

[Book Review Team]

<pre>Author/s : David Flanagan, Brett McLaughlin
Publisher : O'Reilly
Category : Advanced Java
Review by : Jeanne Boyarsky
Rating : 10 horseshoes</pre>
"Java 1.5 Tiger: A Developer's Notebook" has all the information and quality we have come to expect from O'Reilly. However, the developer's notebook series has a very different style than the animal books. The book was a true page-turner and I read all 171 pages in two days.

This book really looks like a notebook complete with notes in the margins, graph paper and coffee cup stains! There is also plenty of room in the margins for the reader to add notes. This book is informative, useful and looks really cool!

A guru narrates the book. He tells you about Java 1.5 and answers your questions. Each chapter discusses several labs in a task/how to I do that?/what about ... format. It is like the author walks you through doing the labs. It really does read like a conversation. As the authors put it: "All lab, no lecture."

The code examples begin on page two and are prevalent throughout the book. The authors give warnings about common pitfalls and tasks that you cannot do -- just like you would expect a guru to do. The authors also give opinions and recommendations.

The book assumes a working knowledge of java 1.4 (or earlier.) This is especially important in the concurrency section. There is excellent cross-referencing so the chapters and tasks can be read in almost any order. I would not give a 10 unless a book was amazing. This one earned it!


More info at Amazon.com
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[Doug Dunn]

Brett, I found this book useful in researching Java 1.5 release updates for Mastering the Fundamentals, and sincerely thank you for that. Congradulations on the ten horseshoe rating. I'm sure you guys will make a lot of money. -Doug

[Barry Gaunt]

Gonna need this: Errata

[Doug Dunn]

Hi Bert,

Your private email box is full, so I will respond here.

The only editing I did of my posts at https://coderanch.com/forums/ were immediately after making them...no "dirty pool" just simple typos. Besides that, there's nothing wrong with Brett's book. I was just letting him know that his damning references to practically every other style of technical writing on the planet earth in the intro to his book were not appreciated. At least, I hope he got that message.

Regards,
Doug

[Barry Gaunt]

Originally posted by Barry Gaunt:
Gonna need this: Errata

... and then some.

I find the book rather superficial in its coverage of some 1.5 topics. It often refers to the forthcoming new edition of Java in a Nutshell (Flanagan, O'Reilly) for more information. It's a reasonable introduction to the newly introduced Java 1.5 features but I look at it as a stopgap only to last until a more thorough reference book arrives. With a list price of US$30 and an Amazon price of around US$20 I found it expensive for what it offers.

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

I found it similar to a presentation Sun gave at a java sig meeting earlier in the year. Assuming you don't know anything about java 1.5, it provides a good overview of the features. I definitely agree that it doesn't replace a reference book!

[Book Review Team]

<pre>Author/s : Brett McLaughlin, David Flanagan
Publisher : O'Reilly
Category : Advanced Java
Review by : Ernest J. Friedman-Hill
Rating : 8 horseshoes</pre>
The foreword to this new O'Reilly series explains that a "Developer's Notebook" is the raw scribbling of an "Alpha Geek" as he or she examines some exciting new technology. That pretty much describes "Java 1.5 Tiger." It's raw, it's scribbling, and it's exciting nonetheless.

At a slim 177 pages, this is one of the shorter general Java books you're ever likely to see. There isn't a lot of fat between these covers. Over the faint blue graph-paper lines and the cute faux coffee stains, the concise text covers just the biggest new features in JDK 1.5: generics, varargs, autoboxing, annotations, printf, enumerations. Many of the plentiful code examples are sensible and give you a realistic idea of how to use a feature. Some of them, unfortunately, are rather contrived and don't make much sense.

My main brickbat for "Java 1.5 Tiger" is the very high incidence of typos, more in the text than in the code. Raw scribbling is one thing, but accuracy is important, too; a programming book demands it. My main bouquet is that I learned a lot from reading it, and honestly, you can't do much better than that.

More info at Amazon.com
More info at Amazon.co.uk

[Jeroen Wenting]

don't you ever make spelling mistakes when scribbling down notes?
I'd not be surprised if some of the more innocious typos at least were deliberate in that context, or maybe I'm too devious

[Doron Orbach]

I bought this book about a month ago, and it is perfect if you know jdk1.4 and just want to switch to 1.5
However, I find the names of the paragraphs not helping due to the fact that they are the same all over the book (like: how to I do that?/what about ) and not connected to the topic.
D. Orbach
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