Dr.Nikolai Bezroukov's Devil's Advocate Commentary on "Thinking in Java" by Bruce Eckel. 
Introduction.  v.0.4. 04/05/98

Introduction

"Thinking in Java" (or TIJ for short) is a thick 1100 page volume with a really original, distinctive cover. For such a volume the book is reasonably priced (partially because there isn't a CD). All examples from the book and, what is even more important, the full text of the book are available from the author's website. TIJ can be considered as one of the first second-generation Java books with a more sober approach to the language. The book got very good rating in the Amazon.com (almost all are ten; BTW if you are using reviews from the  www.amazon.com site, I advice you to drop one review with the highest and one with the lowest marks and use remaining for your judgment).

I like the cover too. The polished wood on the cover looks natural. It's definitely better than early religious paintings that now often used in other books, although the latter do provide a better metaphor for the religious zeal of some Java evangelists.  BTW the cover is inspired  by the  "American Art & Crafts Movement" that emphasized the importance of the individual craftsman in the use of modern tools.

Writing an introductory book on Java is a pretty tricky task. The competition is very strong and with each new rellease of JDK the inflation of value is like inflation of the ruble after dissolution of the USSR (i.e. more than 100% a year ;-). There are more than 500 books on Java, and more than 80% of them are introductory. Than means that in just three years Java became third most important computer language after Basic (more than 3000 books), C/C++ (more than 2000 books) and Pascal (more than 900 books).  There are more books on Java than on Fortran (less than 500), Cobol (less than 500), Lisp (less than 200) -- the languages with more than two decades of history. Java is fashionable and than means that a lot of books were created just to milk the cow. So buyers beware. I use a simple checklist to determine whether a particular introductory programming language book is worth reading:

1. Is the Donald Knuth article "Structured programming with GOTO" mentioned in a chapter on control structures and short-circuit AND and OR explained in the "if" statement?.

2.  Is visibility rules and storage allocation mechanisms (especially difference between static and dynamic allocation) explained clearly using both examples and diagrams ?

3.  Is the  text of the book available electronically or on the CD?

4.  Does the author have a personal web-site with an area devoted to the book ?

5.  Does the book have examples and errata available on the WEB?

6. How practical are the examples and how much of the code can be reused ?

7. Whom the author recommends  (the friends of my friends ...) ?

Not many books will pass this test, so the choice became much easier. TIJ passes all, but q.2 (no diagrams for storage allocation and visibility) and q.6 (some examples need improvement).

Bruce Eckel has found an interesting solution to make his book different despite a Java introductory books glut -- he published the book on the WEB first. At he states himself in the Foreword "it turned out to be the smartest thing I've ever done with a book".  I have a similar experience in publishing my book "Computer virology" in 1989 in Russia first on floppy and then on paper. The fact that the book is available free is a definite advantage. The author benefit from comments and suggestions of early readers and the first edition will be more like the second in quality. Several publishers are now using this approach (see for example McGraw-Hill betabooks site or QUE Personal Bookshelf). If you are ordering from an Internet bookstore that provides the possibility of  "try before you buy" approach. Moreover Java changed so rapidly than the book is often become obsolete before it goes out of print. This is partially the case with TIJ. Still the fact that the book is available in electronic form make a paper edition more attractive as you can use both simultaneously and makes changes and add comments to the electronic version of the book. 

The book was typeset by the author in MS Word 97. That approach has one great advantage – it usually makes the book much more up-to-date than a traditional typesetting, and the book looks much more fresh than other early 1998 books typeset in a traditional way. For example it contains a discussion of  the JFC (a.k.a. Swing library) and from the point of view of new Java developments, it will probably remain competitive with books published until the end of  1998.

But such an approach is not without flaws.  The main drawback of the typesetting style used is that the book  lacks diagrams that will clarify concepts (probably due to some limitations of Ms Word 97).  Layout is mostly plain vanilla text with a very few fonts. An important thoughts are not reiterated and were not put in a separate font. Regrettably, like most other books on Java, Java programs are all typeset at plain Courier with IMHO excessive spacing between the lines. Sometimes smaller font can be used in both examples and output listings. These two factors contributed to the volume of the book adding probably extra 10% to %20.

At the same time the method the author used for writing of the book permits richer typesetting of Java programs. It would be a great difference if the author will do that in future editions. Also MS Publisher should probably be used along with MS Word for typesetting and each chapter should be stored as a separate document instead of a single huge file.

The main complain about the book is almost complete absence of illustrations. Again, one of the reasons here are limitations of MS Word, but I believe there are workarounds, so this is a real drawback of the first edition, than need to be corrected. BTW Bruce Eckel seminar materials suggest that the author is a gifted artist (even played the saxophone) and he definitely can produce interesting illustrations.

The main idea of the book is right -- the programming language should be learned through experimentation with it. Examples are well structured to expose the properties of the language in question. Such an approach is very well suited for teaching. so the book is definitely recommended for  the universities.   

I would like to stress that despite being in the first edition TIJ is quite polished (all examples that I tested worked). Here the method of publishing of the book show its real advantages.

Now let's talk a little bit about competition. First there is a definite advantage that Bruce Eckel is an expert in C++ and has authored four books on C++. So his strongest competitors are the authors who have published books on C++. I read not so many of them and the list below is very limited:

• The main competition is probably "Core Java" by Gary Cornell and Cay S. Horstmann. It is also oriented on serious programmers and like TIJ got almost all 10 in readers reviews at www.amazon.com.  But it does not contain an electronic version of the book  on the CD or on the Net.  So TIJ is better value. I believe both books have merits and, if possible,  "Core Java" should be used with TIJ, as they to certain extent complement each other.
• Michael C. Daconta book "Java for C/C++ programmers".  The latter book does not have a WEB site and is not available electronically, so it cannot compete with TIJ.  In case already it's available I would like just to mention that    the first edition(I do not have the second edition) contains a more detailed comparison between C/C++ and Java and can serve as a supplementary reading.
• "Just Java" by Peter Van der Linden, who is the author of "Expert C Programming". The book is not available electronically. The author seems to be more focused on the lightweight, applet style of Java. I like the style and the reading was really enjoyable. But TIJ provides a much better value.

Among other books that worth buying and reading I would like to mention Java in a Nutshell: A Desktop Quick Reference (The Java Series) by David Flanagan. Again there is no electronic version of the book available.

Recommendations  for the second edition

• Start upgrading now and provide some revised chapters on the WEB based on additional experience gained during the work on "Thinking in C++".
• Polish typesetting skills by taking some advanced course in typesetting with MS Word/MS Publisher;
• Restructure some chapters based on experience with the first edition of the book;
• Do not forget to finish it before year 2000 ;-).

Useful links

Online version of the book competes with other Java e-books and tutorials. See Yahoo!Java or www.developer.com for the most up-to-day list. Developer.com Java Programming Section is a very useful resource for links to programming in Java and and WEB programming (Perl, HTML, etc.). It contains  more documents than I want to list here.  

• Developer.com Java Programming Section -- developer.com is a very useful resource for links to programming in Java and fortunately not limited to Java. the Java programming section contain much more document than I can add here.
• The Java Tutorial  by Mary Campione and Kathy Walrath. The official Sun tutorial. Up-to-date.
• Writing Java(tm) Programs -- a useful list of Java-related documents from Sun, including Java language specification and Java VM specification.
• Java Downloads: (may require registration in the SUN Java Developer Connection which is free)
  • Swing Short Course, Part I --by Magelang Institute(2.17Mb zip format)
  • JavaBeans Short Course --by Magelang Institute (308.5K zip format)
  • Complete Beans Tutorial --by Greg Voss, Sun Microsystems (1.65Mb zip format)
  • JDBC Short Course --by Magelang Institute (6.31Mb zip format)
  • AWT Short Course --by Magelang Institute (1.05Mb zip format)
  • The JavaSoft Java Tutorial download page
• JavaBeans Documentation - Sun site with the beans tutorial.
• Getting Started with VisualAge for Java 1.0 -- by Marc Carrel and John Akerley. These pages contain the final version of an IBM Redbook. December 1997
• IBM Java Education - Introduction to Java Online Course -- the first complete, Internet-based, free course on the fundamentals of Java and Java's important implications for electronic business on the World Wide Web. One-hour, Web-based course on Java uses a combination of video, audio, graphics, and text. A text-based version of the course is also available.
• Rick Baldwin's on-line Java tutorials  Three tutorials including The Advanced Java Programming Tutorial is now available.
  The last tutorial includes topics such as the development of Java Beans, the model-view-controller paradigm, graphics, images, lightweight components, object serialization, and reflection.
• Brewing Java: A Tutorial:   An introduction to the basics of Java programming, by Elliott Rusty Harold.  Covers Java 1.0. A little bit outdated, but can be used as a supplementary material.
• Concurrent Programming Using the Java Language  by Stephen J. Hartley. The material is covered in more detail in the book, Concurrent Programming: The Java Programming Language, published by Oxford University Press in Febr. 1998.
  The book's source code is available from the site.
• Abstract Windowing Toolkit (AWT) Tutorial  by Nelson Yu. Last changes in early 1996. Outdated.
• How to set up and use the JDK (Java Developer's Kit) By Phil Filner, last revised September 6, 1996. Outdated.

• Cooking Beans in the Enterprise Henri Jubin. Fragments of a book from IBM. Very incomplete as of 03/98. 

   

• Shlurrrpp......Java learning Java The Java tutorial for java programming -- the tutorial from India by Vijay Mukhi, Sonal Kotecha and  Shashank Tripathi.

• "Java in a Nutshell" by David Flanagan.-- The second edition is a very good reference and is only $15 (with 25% discount). Each class or interface listing is followed by a listing of the classes, if any, that extend or implement it, the methods that return an object of that type, the methods that are passed an object of that type, and the fields that are declared to be of that type. In this online version, this information is included directly with the class quickref material, where it will hopefully be more useful. The quick reference material also contains three useful indexes: a class index, a method index and a field index. You can browse the quick reference pages from our O'Reilly site, or you can download zip file for viewing locally on your own computer.
  
• Java Network Programming by Elliotte Rusty Harold. Covers Java 1.1. Contains the first chapter and examples from the book His Cafe Au Lait web site at http://sunsite.unc.edu/javafaq/ is a frequently visited Java site.
•  
• Java Secrets site by Elliotte Rusty Harold. The second book of the same author. The idea of showing what is "under the hood" is an attractive one, but it's very difficult to maintain high quality when publishing a book a year, so probably it make sense to wait until the second edition.
  
• O'Reilly Java center -- Worth visiting as web pages for some books contain not only examples, but the test of one or several chapters as well.
  
• Graphic Java -- A book about the Java AWT.  The Graphic Java Toolkit (GJT), version 1.1 can now be downloaded from the same site. "While almost every Java book covers the AWT, none...does it so well or provides such good advice on how best to use it." -- Dr. DOB's Journal, March 1997

• Amazon.com Interview with Peter Van der Linden

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