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Summary: Packed with tips that lead to insight
Review: Properly done, books like this are some of the most treasured in my collection. While it is not necessary to read them to write Java code that works, the value of well-chosen tips is greater than just what efficiencies implementing the rules will add to your code. The tips in this book are generally in this category, providing insight into what is going on when even “simple” Java code is executing. They are advertised as rules of thumb, but I consider them to be much more than that.
To me, they are coding points to ponder, because if you think about them in detail, you will begin to understand programming in general and Java in particular to a much greater degree. With few exceptions, it is possible to see other programming scenarios where the rules in this book can be effectively applied. Independent of the language, coding is largely a series of a few general principles applied to an operationally infinite number of special cases. Learning the principles rather than the special cases is the only way to become a quality programmer capable of handling the unexpected and unusual in a constricted time frame, which is almost the definition of a programming job. Serious study of the tips in this book will move you a great deal towards being flexible and adaptable rather than rigid and a candidate for the next wave of “company adjustments to correspond to current revenue.”
Despite my long experience in Java, I learned a few new things from this book, but most importantly derived some more fundamental insights regarding how to use Java. They were not all in the book, just results of my thinking about what I had read.
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Summary: Written by a high priest of Java. Revelations galore.
Review: Can't say enough, fantastic book. Lots of items I'd barely heard about, let alone implemented. Some of the text is very hard to follow. It took a while to get through the enumerated type. Read this and you feel like you've arrived at the center of the Java universe, you can't be denied if you follow this advice. Finally I have a clue about how / why to use inner classes. Clue how to implement threads. Much better idea about 1.2 Collections (btw, read the Collections Tutorial on Sun by the author, it is fantastic). Note: no way you will have to follow all these tips in your own code - are you really going to implement your own deserialization implementation to validate that your initialization parameters haven't been hacked? Still, it's really important to know what the issues are, also you get a real education in the Java language, what's in it, how to use it, and where. Lots of juicy gossip about where some of the flaws in Java are. This is a very important book, on a level with the Gang of Four book for Java programmers, at least.
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Summary: The best Java book, and valuable for C# developers
Review: I started in computing in '78, and have been using Java since early '95 (before Java was available on Windows).
I read or scan a couple of books a month on Software Engineering, and software development. For me, this is Top 10 for the last 10 years. I strongly recommend it to all Java developers, it is so good that I strongly commend it to C# programmers.
The content is nicely organised into sections, which makes it helpful to focus developers in on understanding key areas. Bloch has done a great job of distilling experience into pithy, practical 'items' with meaningful titles. Effective Java is more approachable and less self-conscious than many of the pattern or 'anti-pattern' books, while still retaining a clear, unclouded focus on the job at hand; he rarely suffers scope creep ;-)
My only complaint is I would like another few points on exceptions and threading, both of which seem to be poorly handled by most developers.
I am looking forward to Joshua's wisdom on Java 1.5.
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Summary: This is what you need to know to become a Java guru!
Review: This book contains a generous cross-section of the knowledge that differentiates Java gurus from advanced Java programmers.I've been working full-time in Java since 1995, prior to version 1.0. I've also written books and articles on Java and have been teaching Java at the University level as a sideline for four years. In that time I've accumulated a great deal of "expert" knowledge about the language, the JVM, and the APIs and developed opinions on the best approaches to use in Java. At this point, reading books such as this that contain a collection of tips and advice I am usually satisfied to gain one new piece of knowledge; I learned at least six new things from this book. Of the 50+ books on Java I've read, this book contains by far the most comprehensive and useful collection of that hard-won knowledge of core Java. The bonus is the clear and concise manner in which it is presented. Bloch is dead-on. There isn't a single factual error or piece of bad advice in the book. The most I came up with were a couple of omissions on some of the topics. However, omissions are inevitable given the technical depth of some of the topics Bloch covers, such as serialization, exceptions and threads. I offer only two caveats about the book. The first is that the book is for advanced Java programmers. This is not to say that this information is not useful to every Java programmer, but you need to have a comprehensive knowledge of Java in order to appreciate many of the topics. This book does not provide comprehensive coverage, but rather fills in the detail and subtleties. I teach a Java IV class and recommend this to my students as additional reading after completing the class. The other caveat is that this book is written from the perspective of writing public APIs. Bloch is the lead architect for the core JDK APIs where the classes and APIs have special security considerations. Several pieces of advice he gives apply absolutely to a public API where you want to defend the API from malicious code. However, if the code you are creating is intended for a less hostile and more trusting environment, fully following all of his advice will result in unnecessarily complex code. The one knock I give to the book is that Bloch does not delineate the circumstances that would dictate following his rather rigorous approach to bullet-proofing an API and can leave the reader with the mistaken perception that the advice applies equally to all categories of code. Overall, this is absolutely a must-have book for the experienced Java programmer. Even if you are not yet an advanced Java programmer, buy this book and keep revisiting it as you advance until everything in the book makes sense to you.
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Summary: The best book on how to program in Java
Review: I spend a lot of time thinking and talking about programming, languages, style, etc. This book is without question the best thing I've read about how to program in Java. The book contains 57 suggestions on what to do or not to do when writing Java code. Most are common sense, though not all -- the material on serialization was new to me, for example. But it's common sense that's developed over time, and much of it is not obvious until you have a lot of experience using the language. Even then, it's worth reading; I consider myself a fairly experienced Java programmer, and I'd say that a quarter of the book was new material for me. Even when I knew a technique he was recommending, it was really good to read the arguments Bloch made for doing something in a particular way. And I found that I agree with almost everything he wrote. The book is very Java-specific. Some of the tips generalize to other, similar, object-oriented languages, or to systems with similar thread models, but, by and large, this is nitty gritty Java hacking. I like that: it allows Block to be concrete in what he says. And, unlike most of the stuff written by JavaSoft employees, this book does not try to pretend that Java is flawless, which is a refreshing perspective; see, for example, his discussion of the Cloneable interface. What's best about the book is that it encodes a lot of the lore and feel of the language: how to use it in practice. If you're working in Java, it belongs on your shelf next to the language specification, and those are the only two general books on the language you should need.
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Summary: A must for every java programmer
Review: If you are a perfictionist, and craving to write perfect jave code, you must read this book. It shows a lot of technical mistakes that even Java gurus fall for it. It will show you the best way of doing things, and the best part is that the auther doesn't not suggest to you to choose certain way, he will lay the advantages and disadvantages, and let you choose for yourself. This book is the gem of all java books.
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Summary: Indispensable for the Java programmer
Review: If you have enough money to buy only one book in Java then this should be it! Bloch's masterpiece consists of 57 tips which specifically delve on using the Java API THE WAY THE DESIGNERS INTENDED IT TO BE. In case you're wondering, the author is a Senior Staff Engineer at Sun Microsystems and was the one who designed and implemented the Java Collections Framework and the java.math.package. I have been programming in Java for 5 years already and still each tip teaches me something new (I was actually surprised when Bloch mentioned that the hashCode method has to be overriden if you were to override an Object's equals method).
However, you need to have programmed in Java for quite some time to appreciate this book as it will not teach you object oriented programming and the Java language constructs from scratch. It's quite a shame that the details he expounds on this book are in the Java specifications but are merely glossed over by the anxious programmer searching for that elusive Java class method to meet some deadline.
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Summary: One of the Best Java References for Effective OOD
Review: This book has proved to be one of the easiest to read out of the Java books I own and have read. Bloch does an excellent job of defining a straightforward methodology to OOPing. This book is probably not for a beginner in Java, but rather for someone with 1 - 2 years Java under their belt and serious about true OO.
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Summary: Incredibly useful for all Java developers
Review: This is one of the most useful books that I've ever read. I'm an experienced Java developer, and I learned a lot of useful tips. I'd also recommend this book to an inexperienced developer - it's helpful for everybody. It has a lot of tips for good programming practices and information that applies to all Java projects (such as information on creating/destroying objects, methods common to all objects, classes and interfaces, general programming, exceptions, threads, and serialization.) It also has some code samples that you can use (such as how to write a good enumeration class or how to write a readResolve method for a singleton class.)
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Summary: Excellent Java resource ...
Review: I've read quite a few programming/development books in my time and a few of them have also been about Java. Most of these books have been good and worth the money, but once in a while I've come across a book that's been a real gem. This book is truly one of those gems, and has become one of the most priced possessions of my bookshelf. If you ever though of yourself as a expert Java programmer, this book is still going to be a must. This book should be a part of any aspiring or accomplished Java programmer's personal library. It gave me quite a few surprises and presented an in-depth look into several topics I've never really touched on in detail before, nor ever seen a good explanation of in any other book. Bloch goes into great detail with a logical and convincing style. His explanations are clear and surprisingly easy to understand. The layout of the book (structure and size) is also good, and it has a very good index of the contents. The book has the ability to keep you glued to your chair for a long time (it's actually very entertaining to read - imagine that?), and it will serve as a indispensable reference once you're done. The book has 10 chapters with a total of 57 different parts (called items in the book). Some examples of these items are "Make defensive copies when needed", "Minimize the scope of local variables", "Favor immutability" and "Consider providing static factory methods instead of constructors". The items are organized in the following chapters: "Creating and destroying Objects", "Methods Common to All Objects", "Classes and Interfaces", "Substitutes for C Constructs", "Methods", "General Programming", "Exceptions", "Threads" and "Serialization". Conclusion: If you are working on maintaining and/or developing your Java skills, this book is highly recommended! I give it an unconditional 5 STARS!!!
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