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Book Reviews

This book review was submitted by a DenverJUG member as part of the Book Review Program.

BOOK DETAILS

REVIEWER

Kevin Hinners

REVIEW

O'Reilly's Developer's Notebook series goal is "focused not on what's nifty...but what you need to simply make it work now." Java 1.5 Tiger: A Developer's Notebook doesn't disappoint on that promise. The book immediately dives into a miscellany of "what's new" features of Java 5.0. The rest of the book covers the core Java 5.0 features, each with its own chapter:

• Generics
• Enumerated Types
• Autoboxing and Unboxing
• Varargs
• Annotations
• for/in Statement
• Static Imports
• Formatting
• Threading

This book does a great job introducing Java 5.0, assuming the reader is already well acquainted with Java. Written by series creator, Brett McLaughlin, Tiger is barebones at 176 pages. The book is primarily based on material from David Flanagan's upcoming Java In A Nutshell revision. The authors provide just enough background to understand how each feature fits into Java 5.0.

Although not a book for beginners, Tiger does describe each language feature, providing examples for their use in code snippets. Which leads me to one complaint I have with the book: many of the examples are barely contrived. It would have been nice to see examples based on real-world problems. Also, setting a common problem domain would provide some much-needed consistency in the overall tone of the book.

The style and format of the Developer's Notebook series is commendable. The book has a tough cover with stay-flat binding, allowing the book to remain open with a little coaxing. This allows you to try out the examples yourself while reading along. The type is set in blue on a graph paper background, keeping with the lab notebook theme. The writing style along with the organization and visual cues make the material easier to understand.

If you are like me, a programmer with experience in Java 1.3 and 1.4, the book brings you up to speed quickly. A fast read without much hype, I felt comfortable writing my own sample code within a short period of time. With many technical books trending towards more content (and higher prices), it's refreshing to see a book doing the opposite. Java 1.5 Tiger: A Developer's Notebook takes its cue from the latest trend in programming, agile development.

(Note that the title of the book will be updated in the next printing to match the official release.)