Product Description

Java keeps growing, adding features, functionality, complexity, and tempting developers to growl with frustration. The 1.4 release of Java 2 Standard edition increases the size of the platform by 50%, to 2757 classes in 135 packages. This guide to the 1.4 version of Java contains an accelerated introduction to the Java programming language and its key APIs so programmers can start writing code right a way. It covers the new features that come with version 1.4 which include: high-performance NIO API; support for pattern matching with regular expressions; a logging API; a user preferences API; new collections classes; an XML-based persistence mechanism for Java Beans; support for XML parsing using both the DOM and SAX APIs; user authentication with the JAAS API; support for secure network connections using the SSL protocol; and support for cryptography. The book contains O'Reilly's quick-reference for all the classes in the essential Java packages, so users can dive in and find what is needed to make the 1.4 version work for them.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #391027 in Books
• Published on: 2002-04-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 992 pages

Thomas Duff, Portland Domino/Notes User Group, July 2002
"....This will be one title you’ll go back to again and again as you explore the wild, wild world of Java."

William Wagers, Focus on Java, July 2002
"A classic Java reference, a dog-eared, highlighted, coffee-stained, copy of which belongs on every Java programmer's desk."

Thomas Duff, Portland Domino/Notes User Group, July 2002
This will be one title you’ll go back to again and again as you explore the wild, wild world of Java.

Customer Reviews

A must have!!
As usual O'Reilly can do no wrong. An excellent indispensable guide to the basic Java language. The book does not pretent to go beyond the core language but is all the better for that. All the important concepts are covered in a consise manner - If you can't remember how something works the details are there and you won't have to read too much to get the point!

The greater part of the book is the reference section. This is nothing that you can't get off the Sun website for free, but I really like having it in printed form.

The one book I always have at my side when writing code - 'nuff said

Still the best
'Java In A Nutshell' has always been the first resource I turn to when I need to look up some method or other in the Java runtime library. The release of Java 1.4 saw the RTL almost double in size and consequently this book is very much larger than previous editions. To conserve space, some features of the previous books have been discarded, notably the UML-style diagrams for each package (it was taking too long to create and maintain these so they were dropped). The book is divided into a number of sections: a language overview to start with, a concise programmer's guide, a command reference and then an enormous class reference, organized on a package-by-package basis. Previous edition of 'Java In A Nutshell' indicated the current pacakge with a tag on the side of the page. This has been removed, which is a big mistake as information is now much harder to find. This, however, is the only criticism that I have. Of all the Java books I have, this is the last I would have taken away from me. Note that the language reference and programmer's guide is probably too terse to learn the language from scratch unless you already know a language like C++.

Interesting - if you are a techy.
I found this book to be

a) very heavy
b) full of programming examples
c) interesting in its course that it steers the reader on

Unlike most other Java books I have read, this book assumes little knowledge of C or C++. HOWEVER if you are a newcomer who just decides they want to learn Java, but has no proper computing knowledge then this book would NOT be one I'd recommend for you.

Oh and the first example in the book (factorial) doesn't compile on my system despite me going over it several times. The other code examples worked fine but I can't help feeling this needs addressing in some way. Nothing about this on the Sun Java website forum though. I will have to persevere.