Inside The Java Virtual Machine

Rating:
Summary: A detailed and methodical book on Java virtual machine
Review: This book is a must if you are planning on writing a JVM on your own or you have ever been wondering 'What the heck it takes to execute a .class file'. This book is a welcome relief to all those who may have just read the specification on Java virtual machine and looking for something more explanatory.

Rating:
Summary: A bit disappointed
Review: This book is mostly a rehashing of the Java Virtual Machine Specification (which is available online from Sun, or in printed form). I found its reference section to be slightly less intuitively-organized than the JVM spec, and the rest of the book didn't really add a lot of new insight, beyond a semi-guided tour of the Java Class File format. I would've like a much more detailed tour of the really interesting JVM elements: locking/synchronization implementation, JITs, threads, and advanced garbage collection implementations. There's a lot of active research into JVM design, but not a drop of it can be found in here, sadly.

Rating:
Summary: A bit disappointed
Review: This book is mostly a rehashing of the Java Virtual Machine Specification (which is available online from Sun, or in printed form). I found its reference section to be slightly less intuitively-organized than the JVM spec, and the rest of the book didn't really add a lot of new insight, beyond a semi-guided tour of the Java Class File format. I would've like a much more detailed tour of the really interesting JVM elements: locking/synchronization implementation, JITs, threads, and advanced garbage collection implementations. There's a lot of active research into JVM design, but not a drop of it can be found in here, sadly.

Rating:
Summary: A little fluffy.
Review: This book is somewhat less terse and succint than other books I've read. I don't have tons of time to read so appreciate short books that get to the point. This book was a little thicker than it needed to be. I like it but "Programming for the Java Virtual Machine" by Engel and O'Reilly's "Java Virtual Machine" are somewhat better books and thinner. PFTJVM has some nice diagrams while JVM has some better explainations on things like exceptions. It might be best to check out these three and pick according to taste.

Rating:
Summary: A little fluffy.
Review: This book is somewhat less terse and succint than other books I've read. I don't have tons of time to read so appreciate short books that get to the point. This book was a little thicker than it needed to be. I like it but "Programming for the Java Virtual Machine" by Engel and O'Reilly's "Java Virtual Machine" are somewhat better books and thinner. PFTJVM has some nice diagrams while JVM has some better explainations on things like exceptions. It might be best to check out these three and pick according to taste.

Rating:
Summary: Good to decorate your shelves
Review: This book spends too much paper explaining the Java history and why it is a good programming language. It is very, very boring. The advanced stuff begins after chapter 3, but they are not well explained. Well, all I can say is I really regret having bought this book, and I do not recommend it to any expirienced and short-in-time Java programmer like me.

Rating:
Summary: Some problems of the book
Review: This is a new book coveres the new JVM internals. First the good points. The book contain some Java applets to illustrate many of the concepts inside it and it is wonderful to working with those applets to understand the underlying idea. However, here comes the bad points. First the book is too thick:) When I read the book, I found many of the same sentences are repeated again and again just like the style in the JVM specification. This style is ok for specification as it wants to be precise but too bad for a introductary book. For example, the class loader delegation model is repeated with equal depth many times in different places of the book. I think the contents of the book can be compressed into half with those duplicate contents being cut off. Another problem is that the illustration has many problems. The arrow lines in many pictures are printed just as a ">" symbol. Besides the typesetting problem of the book, many of the pictures do not help much in the book. Also there are many places where a picture should have been presented instead of just puting some vague statements to clearly illustrate the main ideas but the author didn't put them down.

Rating:
Summary: The real Java Tool-Box
Review: This is really great for a person like me who works on Java and now Jini to have the gifted authors guide - The JVM, and i expect him to release soon his current book on Jini so that i can be among the first 100 to read that book too.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Book for a Java Programmer,Developer or Architect
Review: This is the best book one can find if one has to understand thoroughly about the Java architecture and its internals.If one goes through this book,the development in Java would be much more efficient and productive and even provide you with solutions which you thought were not possible before through Java(If you have read those run of the mill books in the market on Java programming).Though the book is really indepth I would recommed that one should read atleast the first 9 chapters of this book,especially the chapter on "The lifetime of a Class" and this is some information you will not find anywhere.It also helps in debugging Java programs as it provides you with instruction sets.

Rating:
Summary: A great book.
Review: This is the best Java book I have read so far. Bill is a great software engineer and writer. If you want to know about the inside of JVM, this is a must have.