Fascinating but flawed

Hill "JavaRanch Sheriff" (Gaithersburg, MD United States) -
  

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.

Clear, no BS presentation of the new C++ in Java ;)

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This notebook series is a very good aid for the experienced developer who wants to play with some new feauture in the company of an even more experienced fellow who has done most of the research for him. Stay far from this one if you need to learn Java from scratch. (Go for one of the many excellent intro books by Ivor Horton or Cay Horstmann). Not surprisingly this book is one of the best in the series, being mostly the effort of Brett McLaughlin who, besides being a talented coder and writer is also the man behind the O'Reilly "developer notebook idea". In about 150 pages you will get plenty of working examples and clear, concise explanations on the new features of "Tiger": generics (templates), varargs, annotations, autoboxing etc .. If you are a serious Java developer you cannot miss on these new features, and have no excuse for doing it since now you can bridge this gap with just a few hours of reading on a train. And if you are an old school C coder who grudgingly had to pass to Java for "marketing reasons".. I have great news for you.. believe it or not, we got printf back! ;)

1.5 for java developers

"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 conncurrency section. There is excellent cross-referencing so the chapters and tasks can be read in almost any order. This was an amazing book!