Updates
Latest Tweet
What's New?
Check out for latest innovation, a computer based training video collection
Like this Page
The Art of Java Review by D. Mitchell
Good writing, excellent examples, worth reading
What I liked about this book was the fact that the author not only implemented the back end code, but showed how easy it is to put a quick Swing UI on it. The ability to write a complete, good looking application is often missing in most books. I think this should encourage more people to write quick UIs for the various utilities they code in Java. It encouraged me to go back to some old command line programs I use and throw a quick UI on them. Of course, that's not the point of the book. His intention was to show how Java can solve traditional computer science and IT problems. He succeeds at that.
My only complaints are:
1. the book hasn't been updated to Java SE 5 yet.
2. the use of Swing by the author is incorrect in my opinion. I think there's a few times the author doesn't handle the event dispatch thread correctly. This could send people off in the wrong direction with Swing.
3. the coding style doesn't exactly match the Java Style Guide published by Sun. Some people might like this, but I think it's a problem with many books.
4. The code in the book is not syntax highlighted. Most editors do this quite effectively and I think more books should start doing it.