Compact and yet extremely informative, very useful

Java JDK1.5, codenamed "Tiger" was truly an exceptional change in the usual strategy of keeping Java language untouched. The Evolution was implemented by changes to Java's standard packages and the public API only. This time Java team went after the language itself and provided a bewildering set of changes, most notably through the generics, which look like C++ generics, mean though something diametrical different. JDK1.5 was not an Evolution, it was a Revolution, an overthrow. The Java as we knew it, has died...

I must admit, even as a veteran and active software architect I was lost in the wilderness of the new stuff, I did not knew what to make up of it all. Best was to avoid it all, and keep mind focused on our own, or rather our customers business.

This 180 pages booklet emulating the "notebook" with a 1/4 inch grid paper changed my position. Usually I am skeptic of writers like David Flanagan, seemingly a walking thesaurus with opinion to every system, language etc, but I felt proven wrong after the lecture of this book. It provides a nice conceived crash course in:

1) Generics,
2) Enumerations,
3) Boxing,
4) varargs,
5) Annotations,
6) The so lovely for/in statement,
7) Static imports, (Hurray, I love these!)
8) Formatting, a new C-like facility, titanic change for Java users,
9) New Threading features.

Each feature is of course merely briefly introduced, but in a well conceived compact form, including a nice code example and in many cases discussion of compilation error messages. Every example has the same sections "How do I do that?" and "What just happened." I got it quickly, just as I like it, and after this lecture I was on my way to use the JDK1.5 features instantly, or I was ready to get some more specialized literature. Here I mean specifically the monstrous Java generics... One needs an entire book devoted to these only.

For me personally the biggest gain from this reading was the discovery of the Formatter/alias printf facility. Finally, we fought for years with conservative forces on Java team to make this happen. Several emulator packages were written over the years, some were even offered for money. This novelty invalidates the ah to useless monster set of dramatically verbose Java text IO classes, about which entire now obsolete books were written. McLaughlin/Flanagan code examples were enough to instantly understand the enormous gravity of this change.

I can warmly recommend this book to everybody who knew Java since its beginning and needs a quick jolt toward the seemingly so different looking code with its erratic and all such unknown constructs. An alternative would be literally to abandon the entire older Java book collection and to seek for one of the 1500 pages new books. I will rather stick with my trusty literature and add this 180 pages to it. Done. Do it too, you will like it.

Please note also that Amazon lists this book under 3 different article numbers. Its each time the same book.

Other Reviews

• Pretty Good Overview
• Compact and yet extremely informative, very useful
• Better than Herbert Schildt's Tiger Book
• Good Intro to the latest features of Java 1.5 Tiger.
• Good book to start with.