Rating: 
Summary: A Must Read for Intermediate Java Developers
Review: Although the word "performance" is in the title, the main goal of this book is to provide a set of best practices and code samples (idioms) that allow correct Java programs to be written quickly and easily. The authors explain the parts of Java that give intermediate Java programmers the most trouble, and that many programmers learn only from years of painful experience. This book will allow a Java programmer who has mastered the basics of the language to quickly progress to an expert Java developer.Interestingly, this book has exactly the same weaknesses as another Java style book I recently read -- the double-checked locking idiom is incorrectly described as thread-safe, the fact the null is a valid value for enumerations implemented as classes is not mentioned, and nested classes are referred to as inner classes. But when I take into consideration how long this book is, I'm surprised there are so few errors. The best way to read this book is slowly and carefully. Even when I thought I already understood a point the authors were making, I picked up subtleties by examining the code closely and re-reading the description of how it works. Writing correct Java programs is often tricky, and only the most experienced Java developers will not learn something from this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Idiom? Axiom? Idiocy?
Review: Documents useful techniques and best practices. Any serious Java programmer has to read this book atleast once.
Rating:
Summary: Very useful tips for Java Programming
Review: I bought this book because I notice there are some tricks that are mentioned in this book are the same as I was told by some experienced software engineers. I feel I even learned more from this book than the dev conference. The examples are very simple and esay to understand. If you have the basic knowledge of Java, this book will bring your Java programming skill to higher level.
Rating:
Summary: One of the best books for the intermediate and advanced
Review: I first saw this book on the desk of a respected colleague. I flipped through it and immediately liked it. In a way, the presentation is very simple, e.g. don't do this, do it this way instead. And there's not a lot of fluff, no introductory stuff. The book is targetted at the intermediate and advanced Java programmers interested in making performance gains in their application. When I asked to borrow the book, and was denied, I knew it had to be a great book. So I bought the book, read it, and used it on a project I was working on. I was absolutely amazed many examples from the book were applicable to this project. I'm sure you'll find the examples just applicable in your workplace. This is a good one, if you're interested in Java performance, buy it!
Rating: 
Summary: Hardly worth the effort
Review: I have 2 years Java experience. I learned very little of value about performance optimization of my code, very little about performant design idioms, and nothing about performance issues in large Java systems. I agree with the earlier comment about "big type and lots of white space". If you want coding style help, get Kent Beck's book on Smalltalk patterns and apply it to your Java. My overall mileage was pretty low.
Rating:
Summary: This should be your second book on Java
Review: Knowing the syntax of a programming language is not enough, and this book will help you write better java programs. By following the Idioms in the second part of the book, your java code will be clearer, more elegant and easier to maintain. After that you can use the guidelines presented in the first part to make it run faster. This should be the second Java book a Java programer should read (after learning the Java language basics).
Rating:
Summary: Idiom? Axiom? Idiocy?
Review: Something that inanely irritates me about Craig Larman's books is why he uses "idiom" when he means "axiom". Craig read a dictionary! "idiom" has specifically linguistic meaning, whereas "axiom" means means an approach or principle.
Rating:
Summary: Some outdated 1999 tips
Review: They really should release a 2nd edition with new techniques, and remove the old, disproven stuff (double-checked locking works???). We're on the brink of Java 1.5, this book is pure 1.1. Spend your money on Effective Java by Joshua Bloch. Same style of book, much higher timeliness.
Rating: 
Summary: Good quick read
Review: This book is not highly organized, reading more like an almanac than a textbook, but I think that is a plus here. I bought the book for the performance section, and picked up a couple things that only a guru would pick up on their own (e.g. the fact that Strings recalc their hash key every time). By cruising through all the points it helps reinforce your existing knowlege of to-do's and not to-do's, as well as comparing tradeoffs of similar choices. I ended up with some added confidence for my "common sense" programming practices, and some very valuable insight in some unfamiliar areas. The downside is that this hardcover book is expensive for it quantity of content, and doesn't lend itself well to revisions. I actually like the brevity and white space, but I was able to browse the entire performance section is about 90-min. A perfect handbook! A pricy textbook. I would have preferred to buy a cheap paperback version that might benefit from yearly revisions (like The Java Developer's Almanac), especially since I'm sure new revelations of performance tuning will materialize as the Java language matures and grows. Also, the book only covers general Java performance, touching on RMI, AWT, and Collections, but really staying close to the java.lang package... I'm sure there is a lot that could have been covered in specific API's (Java 2D, 3D, JDBC, etc.) Overall this book is a keeper! Strong praise since even after being very picky about spending my book money I still end up trashing 50% of the books I buy. I look forward to future expanded (and cheaper) editions.
Rating:
Summary: Good quick read
Review: This book is not highly organized, reading more like an almanac than a textbook, but I think that is a plus here. I bought the book for the performance section, and picked up a couple things that only a guru would pick up on their own (e.g. the fact that Strings recalc their hash key every time). By cruising through all the points it helps reinforce your existing knowlege of to-do's and not to-do's, as well as comparing tradeoffs of similar choices. I ended up with some added confidence for my "common sense" programming practices, and some very valuable insight in some unfamiliar areas. The downside is that this hardcover book is expensive for it quantity of content, and doesn't lend itself well to revisions. I actually like the brevity and white space, but I was able to browse the entire performance section is about 90-min. A perfect handbook! A pricy textbook. I would have preferred to buy a cheap paperback version that might benefit from yearly revisions (like The Java Developer's Almanac), especially since I'm sure new revelations of performance tuning will materialize as the Java language matures and grows. Also, the book only covers general Java performance, touching on RMI, AWT, and Collections, but really staying close to the java.lang package... I'm sure there is a lot that could have been covered in specific API's (Java 2D, 3D, JDBC, etc.) Overall this book is a keeper! Strong praise since even after being very picky about spending my book money I still end up trashing 50% of the books I buy. I look forward to future expanded (and cheaper) editions.
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