Tag: java

Thinking in Java is a classic Java book by Bruse Eckel. This is an awesome book, that goes far beyond the typical leanring Java books, because Bruce goes to some length to explain not just the how, but also the why.

If you want to get a more indepth understanding of the Java lanaguage and platform then this book is a definite ‘must read’ (however it may be too much information for someone just starting out with Java).

If you’ve come across this book before, then this 4th Edition of the book has been updated to cover Javav SE 5.0 features, and now weighs in at 1500 pages.

Previous editions of the book can be found for free electronic download on Bruce Eckle’s website, here.

Bruce was also recently interviewed on the Java Posse webcast, in which they talked about the book in some detail. The podcasts(2 parts) can be downloaded here.

Josh Bloch has (in my opinion) one of the best Java books out there for improving your understanding of the Java Language – Effective Java

In the same vein Josh Bloch and Neal Gafter have been presenting ‘Java Puzzlers’ at JavaOne and other conferences, presenting an unusual snippet of code and challenging people to work out what the code does. JavaLobby have a recording of one of their sessions at JavaPolis.

Also, Bloch and Gafter released a book which is a collection of these code puzzles, which is well worth a look (it’s currently on my Amazon Wish List 🙂 – Java Puzzlers

OnJava.com have a sample chapter from the book ‘Maven: A Developer’s Notebook’, which gives a quick headstart into getting started with Maven for your build process.

I have just started to investigate the use of Maven for one of my own projects, and I am impressed so far – in particular with the fact that the same targets that I would write again and again in Ant for different projects are now just part of Maven by default – it already knows how to compile, run JUnits, generate Javadoc etc, you just configure where your source and target directories are (if they are non-standard and not following the suggested directory layout that Maven will use by default), and it gets on and does it thing. Very cool.

java.sun.com have a two part article covering the new web tier features in EE5.0, including the JSTL1.2 tag library and JSF 1.2, and

• Web Tier to Go With Java EE 5: Summary of New Features in Java Standard Tag Library (JSTL) 1.2</li
• Web Tier to Go With Java EE 5: Summary of New Features in JavaServer Faces 1.2 Technology

The JSTL tag lib is now a bundled feature of the EE platform so you don’t have to include the jar in your web apps anymore. The EL language has now been combined between JSTL EL and JSF EL, to form a Unified Expression Language – see the follow-on article here for more info.

Other changes include fixes and improvements for the multiple browser/conversation support, and saving of session state to the client.