3 comments about Java for Programmers.

1. Review of "Java for Programmers" by Douglas Lyon
   
   Carl Weiman, Ph. D., reviewer
   
   This new book spans all the novel and valuable features of Java Technology, such as OOP and built-in web functionality, in a clear, head-on fashion. Professor Lyon?s crisp writing style and clear examples carry the reader to the heart of Java and implant the concepts firmly in the programmer?s mind.
   
   The unabashed use of the word ?Programmers? (rather than, for example, ?Software Engineers?) in the title of Professor Lyon?s book is a refreshing admission that, after all, software is created by programmers. The recent emergence of extreme programming (XP) has spurred a quantum leap in programmer productivity, a factor which makes the programmer and this book additionally important. Consider the analogy of programmer to mountaineer, where the project corresponds to a mountain. In scaling the peaks of project development, XP facilitates leaps from crag to crag rather than foothold to foothold. The programmer utilizes chasm-spanning shortcuts to the summit of project completion. Java for Programmers gives today?s programmer seven league boots in the form of easy to understand code modules which scale to professional use in web, network, database, graphical, GUI, and XML applications.
   
   All too often, introductory programming language books give simple classroom examples which dumb down the language, and cram business logic and GUI into the same class. Dr. Lyon?s extensive professional and pedagogical experience shine in his avoidance of such examples by providing strong design-pattern classes which are simple enough to comprehend immediately and scalable to commercial applications. This is the clearest book I have seen for introducing both novices and experienced professionals to Java. Java for Programmers is a must-use for teachers of Java at all levels and for professional developers in any field of application that uses Java.



2. Below is a letter to the author. I would not buy this book, unless you are looking for an exercise in debugging a screwed up book. The author should be embarassed, and any profesor claiming excellence of this book should be embarassed as well.
   
   Dear Mr. Lyon,
   
   I recently purchased your book: Java for Programmers. I bought it based on what I had read on the front and back covers of this book, regarding that it been "class tested", and from the comments of Prof. Carl Weiman, Ph.D., Cooper Union, that "This book is a must-use for teachers of Java at all levels and for professional developers in any field of application that uses Java". Having read the first 6 chapters of this book, I'm gonna guess that Mr. Weiman is a very good friend of yours.
   
   I am a Software Engineer. I program for real, on real applications for the last 19 years. I have a MS in Computer Science from Johns Hopkins University, and a BS in Computer Science with a Minor in Mathematics from the State University of New York at Albany. When I buy a book with authors of Ph.D caliber, I expect a quality book. I expect that the examples work, that the book reads well so that it conveys complicated information in a manner that it can be understood. Your book is probably the worst book I have ever purchased in Java, and for that matter all of Computer Science.
   
   The content of this book has probably the worst layout I have ever seen. There are an abundance of grammatical errors, and for that matter the content is not even correct. I will admit that before purchasing your book, I have read others. In fact, I even did some professional Java Development work, although it was on a small scale. There were problems with theirs, but nothing like I have seen in this book.
   
   Here are some of the incorrect examples I have found (I know there are ALOT more... I just don't feel like proofreading your book for you for free)
   
   Page # Example Problem
   55 public class Payroll You created an object within this class that has a main routine.
   And Payroll does not.
   I compiled it and got: Exception in thread "main"
   java.lang.NoSuchMethodError:main
   
   61 public class hi() What's this? The word class does not belong here. Was this an
   attempt at an inner class?
   
   62 The Keyword Explain what "The Keyword" is?. Did you mean "instance of"?
   
   65 public void move closing } is not indented
   
   65 class Doggy,
   class Student,
   class Profesor What are these doing there?
   
   67 Section 6.9 "the data process itself" <--- That's a real clear statement!
   
   67 Delegation No examples here. Just rambling.
   
   Now, here's a better question for you. I notice that in the beginning of some of the chapters you claim credit with Maynard Marquis. Other chapters, no one takes any credit for.
   
   Examples:
   Chapter 1 - Nobody took credit for this one
   Chapter 2 - ""
   Chapter 3- Yourself and Maynard Marquis
   Chapter 4- ""
   Chapter 5 - ""
   Chapter 6 - Back to the unknown author (but, maybe it should be comic...)
   
   I think after 6 chapters, I pretty much got the ghist of this book. You should be ashamed of yourself, and anyone who lends their name to the quality of this book (i.e. Prof. Carl Weinman, Ph.D., Cooper Union) as well.
   
   If you are truly teaching your students with this (or maybe they are forced to buy it as part of the reading material for your course... ), then I feel truly sorry for them as well. If the only instruction they will be arriving at in the real world to program in Java is your instruction from this book, then they will fail.
   
   It is too bad Ph.D's cannot be revoked. Yours and Ph.D. Carl Weinman deserve careful consideration.
   
   I want my money back.
   
   Disgusted reader
   
   Oh, by the way, here as some comments from the author himself from within this gem of a book:
   "This book has been such a long ordeal. What I need right now is a good psychotic book." (Acknowledgments)
   "This book was written while drinking vast amounts of Kahinda Kenya AA coffee... Now that the book is done, I can sleep." (Colophon)



3. I used this book in an intermediate level Java course taught by the author. It covers a great deal of territory, and it does so without the mind-numbing detail of, for example, Deitel's Java: How To Program. That said, it depends very heavily on its author's open source DocJava API. As other reviewers have said here, that library is not without its bugs, which are reproduced in the text. And the proofreading is less than perfect. I would not use this as a primary text for learning Java, but as an example of one way to build a library in Java. Another edition, with the code more thoroughly tested and the library code more carefully separated from the Sun library code, would improve the text greatly.
   
   That said, I learned a lot from the author, and from his frequent co-author, Maynard Marquis, who teaches at the same University.

1 comments about Advanced Systems Design with Java, UML and MDA.

1. The book's theme is about representing a functional description independently of its implementation. It shows how when Java was released, its interface property, which C++ lacks, is an excellent way to do this, at the coding level.
   
   While UML is a good way at the system schematic level, to perform an analogous factorisation. Then the book goes on to describe the Model Driven Architecture, to take these ideas further.
   
   All of this is nice. Though perhaps it is still premature to say how effective MDA will be. Whereas for Java and UML, those have clearly proved their merits.

No comments about JavaScript Developer's Dictionary (Developer's Library).

5 comments about The Java Tutorial: Object-Oriented Programming for the Internet (2nd Edition).

1. This is perhaps one of the most well written technical books I have come across in a long time. It helps to have OOP background, to understand the way java works. The book is not a tutorial in the sense that some would expect, but it explains the fundamentals and attributes of the language in a very clear way. I have had this book for several years now and still refer to it (as a programmer) every now and then to review the fundamentals of how some things really work, so in that sense it is still valuable, especially due to the technical details. If users want to learn how to implement specifics on awt etc..., then they should buy a book that focuses on that, but this book does accomplish the objective of introducing java very well. This has been the source and perhaps a reference referred to by many when first introducing people to java. Problem is, the book is now probably well out dated, and the reader is adviced to buy newer editions, but this is still a great reference book on the fundamentals and mechanics of the language. Bottom line, I have no regrets for purchasing this book.



2. This was my textbook for a introductory college class for Java, and I never refer to it that much. Not too many examples to take a look at. It is good for a reference when you are more knowledgeable about Java. But don't think this is a handholding sort of book for the neophyte in Java. I wish there were more example for applets in the book. Anybody wants to buy my copy? The college bookstore is not buying it back, and I wonder just why.



3. Not that its bad. It like most Sun books is very good, but the Third edition is out. Buy that to get the latest on learning JAVA(tm).



4. This book is officially blessed by Sun Microsystems, but don't let that fool you - it isn't the best place to start with Java. If you've never used Java before, look for the "Core Java" book. Don't start with this one. I teach Java courses, and we originally tried to use this book as a supplement to in-class work. It wasn't terrible, but we found that the "Core Java" book was much better received than this for first time students.

   This book was originally written for presentation on the Sun web site, where you can still find it. As a result, it's written in a format that is laced with links and cross references, which I found a little distracting in book form. It's still usable, though - and I'd rather have this much material in book form. You can't exactly curl up with a good laptop.

   After you've already got the sort of good foundation in Java that a book like "Core Java" provides, this book can be very helpful. You can use this book to fill in the gaps and solidify your understanding of the language. It covers a host of important individual fundamental concepts rather well, and speaks intelligentally to language features, syntax, applets, and more.




5. This book is not a tutorial; it is not even really introductory.
   It does have some good explanations though. i bought thisd book because I have been trying to learn Java for the past 9 months. It isn't that the language is hard its the way it is taught!
   
   I will rate this book 3 stars; 3 stars for some good explanation. But the rest of the book is dumb examples and demonstrations, you will have to look up stuff at the Java web site to find out what exactly the methods mean. Also this book assumes you already know some basic java or whatever.
   
   If you have read some other java books fine buy this book, if not, beware; this book is only demonstrations without proper explanations.
   
   The purpose of a Java book should be to get the person reading it to apply what they study and I have yet to read such a book.

5 comments about Java Data Objects.

1. Maybe the rest of the book is Ok, or maybe not. I just tried to run the examples of the first chapter and it was impossible for me.



2. Java Data Objects is simple and straightforward, and solves a real
   problem in an elegant way. Conveniently, this also serves as a
   description of this enjoyable book from some of the key members of the
   JDO specification team.

   If you don't know, JDO is a recently standardized API for transparent
   object persistence. A standalone reference implementation is
   available, as are quite a few commercial and open-source versions that
   piggyback on relational databases and other storage solutions. JDO's
   popularity is growing rapidly because of its simplicity, ease of use,
   and scalability. "Java Data Objects" is a timely and practical
   treatment of this new API.

   After a clear and accessible overview, this book first presents JDO in
   a tutorial style using a simple but nontrivial example
   application. Later chapters fill in the details where needed: for
   instance, a whole chapter is dedicated to the difficult topic of
   object identity.

   The motivations behind JDO's development are explained well, and
   comparisons to other object-persistence solutions, including EJB
   container-managed persistence, are fair and balanced. One of this
   book's few flaws is that despite the authors' important roles on the
   standards committee, the rationale behind some of JDO's more puzzling
   properties are left unexplained. In particular, JDO requires that only
   a small subset of the standard Collections be supported by a JDO
   implementation, but this book doesn't explain how this subset was
   chosen.

   All in all, an excellent tutorial and reference that will have you up
   and running with JDO in no time at all.




3. Good books don't get discounted by 60%, because items that sell well charge a premium in our capitalistic culture.

   This book is unorganized. Lacks clear and cohesive sentence structure that leads to understanding. It is a step above the Enzio book, but that isn't really saying much. The code examples do run, check errata, and for some reason it is easier to read the code than a paragraph from this author. Go figure?

   A true nightmare, and don't be fooled by the gratuitous stars from the author's friends.




4. This book is definitely the best on java data objects! i have read the one from prentice hall and addison wesley`s. its true that the first code example doesnt work, what is a shame but if you overcome your frustration and have a look at the oreilly website you can fond the correct and again detailed information (and even reason) to get it done. short cut to the correctings is : http://examples.oreilly.com/jvadtaobj/README.txt .



5. I was expecting something better from the JSR lead for JDO.
   
   Before you buy this book, go to oreilly website for this book and go through the Chapter 1 available online. That chapter could have been fit in half as many pages without loss of information.
   
   Now refer to the errata and README available on the oreilly website, download the JDO reference implementation and see if you can run the examples.
   
   The examples don't work even if you follow the directions from the errata and README.
   
   By now you would have wasted a few valuable hours.
   
   If the Chapter 1 "An Initial Tour" is a waste of time, there is no reason to expect something better in the rest of the book.
   
   So the books sucks, but you want to learn JDO! What can you do?
   
   Download an evaluation edition of Kodo JDO from Solarmetric. Install it and you will get a JDO Developers Guide. Go through that. It is significantly better than this book. While you are at it, you can play with Kodo and get a feel for a real implementation of JDO, rather than Sun's reference implementation.

5 comments about Weaving a Website: Programming in HTML, Java Script, Perl and Java.

1. THis book is very very good
   im in college and the webdesign teacher suggested a different book and i took a gamble and got this book instead and i love it



2. I'm a former student of Dr. Anderson-Freed and I am currently a professional web developer. I have seen this book in two classes on web programming, the first time in a draft form and the second time in its current form. Having seen the errors and typos in the draft, and having pointed them out during class, I had hoped that the final print of the book would contain at least some of the corrections. Unfortunately, as another reviewer has pointed out, the book still contains numerous errors, typos, and just plain incorrect programming.

   I still own a copy of her book because I have penned in corrections to many of the errors in the book. It covers a little bit of everything, and the little bit of reference I need for Perl and Java are met by this book and web references. However, I also currently own and recommend the HTML 4 Bible and JavaScript Bible, both published by IDG Books. I would recommend the Bible series of computer books over Dr. Anderson-Freed's book to anyone who requires a web-related programming reference. The same goes for IWU students who are taking her classes: don't buy this book. While her book contains many examples (many of which she uses in class), a good portion of her examples have code that does not produce the desired results. You would be better off reading another text and recreating the examples on your own.




3. An absolutely amazing resource!! I took an html class, and this was the book that got me through it. The examples are interesting and clever. She's also very friendly if you ever try to e-mail her with questions.



4. This book isn't horrible. The guy above obviously is an ex-lover of the author and is none to happy. The book has excellent examples and walks through the basics of HTML, JavaScript, JAVA, and perl. After you have learned the languages it is awesome for using as a reference and refresher.



5. I used this text book in a class on HTML and Java Script. It was too riddled with errors to recommend as a good text book on programming. Previous classes have documented over a hundred errors in the text, and code samples; some minor, and some major. There are much better guides to programming than this book.
   You may save money buying just this one book , but I did not find it money well spent.

No comments about Java Applets 3rd Edition (B&W).

4 comments about J2EE Open Source Toolkit : Building an Enterprise Platform with Open Source Tools (Java Open Source Library).

1. This book is not only good conceptually and instructionally, but it's also a great reference text. Aside from reading very well, the content presentation is straightforward and concise. Using this book the reader can quickly throw together everything needed for development of this nature. The book is worth it for the chapter on developer tools (chapter 4) alone. After sitting down and going through it once, I was finally able to get a complete development environment up and running under Linux. I had made a few attempts before but couldn't set up the environment correctly nor had any good choice for an IDE. Under Linux (my preferred development platform) I had always just used the command line compilation tools and text editors (like vi). Now the IDE is set up and I can test, debug, write, and deploy code easily and I'm considerably more productive.
   The book is incredibly useful for experienced programmers and indispensable for anyone trying out Java and J2EE (particularly if you don't have access commercial development environment or testing platform... as a grad student I rely heavily on open source for development in all languages). It also explains how open source solutions can enhance production environments as well. And I've not found another reference that had everything I needed all in one place. This text is thoroughly recommended to anyone with an interest in J2EE or Open Source.



2. I would definitely recommend this book to developers or enterprises that need to build applications with limited resources.

   Having been the commercial app server developer for years (using Weblogic, JRun and Websphere), I was unaware of the capabilities of todays opensource app server. The capabilites and performance of opensource app servers like JBoss are well illusted in this book.

   This book also introduces the reader to a variety of opensource API's. Most of these API's are supported by Jakarta or Sourceforge projects.

   As it's name suggests, if you need opensource knowledge, start with this toolkit.




3. This book is perfect for anyone wanting an introduction to the capabilities of Open Source software. It is EVEN BETTER to help convince management on using Open Source. It clearly shows how to quickly setup a free, fast and reliable enterprise platform for your development team without spending thousands of dollars!

   If you want to have a professional level enterprise platform for you or your development team this book is for you! Using the book and the Companion website you can use all of the most popular open-source tools to build a single, integrated platform.




4. I tried to make myself read this book, but it didn't say much. Mainly a list of open source projects for a given topic. For example, templating engines, then proceeds to explain each one. This goes on for the entire book. Most of this information is available on the web for free. I wouldn't recommend this book.

3 comments about Java Cryptography Extensions: Practical Guide for Programmers (The Practical Guides).

1. This book delivers on what it promises. A practical guide to implementations using the JCA and JCE. If you're a Java developer starting on projects that deal with certificates, keystores, encryption, digital signatures, tokens, digests, or hardware cryptographic devices (HSMs), then you need to read this book before you begin.
   
   Jason covers the topics he sets out to cover. If your eyes glazed over at the JCA documentation describing EngineSPIs or at mathematical treatises on crypto algorithms, then this book is for you. He gets right to the meat of the matter, and the code is simple enough to follow without having an IDE running. There are only a few typographical flaws, and nothing that distracted from the concepts being explained.
   
   The book walks you through the overall provider architecture, gives examples of provider selection and some key workaround information for some historical problems as the JCA and JCE were being developed, extended, and improved by Sun.
   
   Straight-up crypto is covered with symmetric and asymmetric keys, the coverage of block and stream ciphers, and the importance of specifying chaining (EBC/CBC/etc.) and padding (PKCS1/PKCS5/etc.). Digests, HMACs, Password-based encryption (PBE) and digital certificates are covered, along with key exchange (DH), and key management in keystores. The extra depth the author gives on key management was quite welcome, and often ignored. Examples using the Java keytool utility will also be appreciated by the target audience.
   
   In short, this book is going to be on my required reading list for the Java application developer generalist starting on projects that involve crypto or, in particular, certificates. In my case, I use hardware-based keystores, and this book makes it very easy for me to build a common understanding in explaining what we want our team to accomplish.
   
   This book should take about a week to digest.
   
   What you won't find in this book are recipes or procedures. It's a practical guide, and lives up to the title. This book won't be a help to people writing JCPs either -- it's clearly targeted at the application developer needing to do things like load a certificate, implement a 3DES encryption/decryption, generate keys, or make sure you're using the required JCP implementation for your project. It also won't explain the nuances of ECB and CBC, or Blowfish and AES. But it will give you a practical guide on their fundamental differences as to the impact they have on your development. All example code is in Java. It doesn't cover elliptical algorithms, but, after reading this book, you shouldn't have a problem with writing code that relies on a specific provider's features.
   
   As for the price, quite reasonable, and very useful to pass along or lend to the newcomers to your team.



2. What's wrong with this book? There is no thorough explanation of the concepts of cryptography, he just starts off taking shotcuts and with code examples that are absolutely not mature.
   I have a theoretical background in cryptography, but often had to read the text many times over before I could understand what the author was trying to say.
   
   This is the starting point for a practical guide on java cryptography, an introduction, but by no means enough.
   I would have considered giving it 3 stars, weren't it not that het appendix A on Base64coding, another topic that the author doesn't treat, is completely missing !



3. The book has good introduction material the examples described in the book are bit old and some of the classes are deprecated. The book also needs an update to include newer features of JCE and JSSE. I hurried up to buy this book and then realized it is bit outdated. Now I have Core security patterns by chris steel which covers well on cryptography api and examples using j2se 5.0 and j2ee 1.4 as well.

5 comments about Inside The Java Virtual Machine.

1. This book is somewhat less terse and succint than other books I've read. I don't have tons of time to read so appreciate short books that get to the point. This book was a little thicker than it needed to be. I like it but "Programming for the Java Virtual Machine" by Engel and O'Reilly's "Java Virtual Machine" are somewhat better books and thinner. PFTJVM has some nice diagrams while JVM has some better explainations on things like exceptions. It might be best to check out these three and pick according to taste.



2. This book is mostly a rehashing of the Java Virtual Machine Specification (which is available online from Sun, or in printed form). I found its reference section to be slightly less intuitively-organized than the JVM spec, and the rest of the book didn't really add a lot of new insight, beyond a semi-guided tour of the Java Class File format. I would've like a much more detailed tour of the really interesting JVM elements: locking/synchronization implementation, JITs, threads, and advanced garbage collection implementations. There's a lot of active research into JVM design, but not a drop of it can be found in here, sadly.



3. The book covers many abstract concepts, but it is hard to understand what something abstract means without a concrete example. Implementation of the heap, object layout, etc. is difficult to conceptualize without a real example. I would have been happy if this book discussed the VM as it does now with a running commentary on the Sun Win32 JVM implementation.



4. This book spends too much paper explaining the Java history and why it is a good programming language. It is very, very boring. The advanced stuff begins after chapter 3, but they are not well explained. Well, all I can say is I really regret having bought this book, and I do not recommend it to any expirienced and short-in-time Java programmer like me.



5. so many pages, and so little stuff. what a waste of time and money!