A good intro book

This book is an introduction to four major areas: networking, Java language, Java network programming, and Java distributed computing. Dozens of published books are specifically dedicated to each of these topics in detail, but this book is trying to give a reader a taste of all these technologies at the same time.

The book is easy to read. Most of the material is clearly explained and illustrated. Code examples (demos) are clean and complete. The demos are not contrived, but present to the reader interesting implementations that may be reused and give a good idea of how programs that are commonly used may work (SMTP, POP clients, HTTP server, etc.). Each of the demos is followed by a detailed explanation that focuses on how the demo works.

I like the book, although I think that the chapters covering Java language programming are extraneous: if you don't know Java, you should learn it from Java language specific books first, and only then venture into the advanced topics of Java network and distributed programming.

The book reminds me somewhat of the classic "Unix Network Programming" by Richard Stevens, which was a must for any C/Unix programmer more than a decade ago.

Other Reviews

• Content great - but book fell apart
• One of the best instructional books I�ve read!
• Very well written
• Simple to understand, but I prefer a bit of complexity. . .
• A good intro book