Are there any recommended Java books?

[Martin Gregorie]

When I taught myself C I used the excellent Kernighan & Richie's "The C
Programming Language" - this was a few years after I started to program,
so already knew Algol 60, COBOL and a couple of assemblers (ICL 1900's
PLAN and MC6800). A year or two later I discovered Kernighan & Pike's "The
Practice of Programming".IMO this is a book every new C programmer should
have, and which I picked up a few more useful ideas from.

I also found "Informal introduction to Algol 68", by S. G. van der Meulen
and C. H. Lindsey which was excellent - in fact thats the only book about
a programming language I've seen with example code so good and so well
described that it made me laugh. I used what I learned from it to write an
improved version of the job accounting program used by ICL's George 3
operating system in Algol 68R.

Another few years on and a group of us did a week-long Java 2 course,
which gave us a start, but little more than that. So, I went looking for a
Java book equivalent in quality to the K&R C book, but didn't find
anything to match it. The best I managed to find was Ivor Horton's
'Beginning Java 2', which taught me pretty well what I needed to get up to
speed in Java, but it didn't mention 'make' equivalents at all, but
fortunately I managed to find 'ant', which so far has done everything I've
needed it to do.

So, what's currently available for learning Java as a second or third
programming language that are as good as the two C books I mentioned?

Finding anything as good as the Algol 68 book would be a huge bonus too.


--

Martin | martin at
Gregorie | gregorie dot org

[Knute Johnson]

Hey Martin, how are you doing? Get any gliding in?

I don't actually own these books but the Oracle list that sends me stuff
sent a review of Cay Horstmann's latest iteration of the Core Java
books. I think folks think these two are some of the best out there.

https://blogs.oracle.com/javamagazine/post/core-java-12th-edition-horstmann?source=:em:nw:mt::::RC_WWMK200429P00043C0056:NSL400230298&elq_mid=222615&sh=161306072217121913081213312924132219&cmid=WWMK200429P00043C0056

This list was a great resource 20 years ago when I was learning Java.
Not so much action on it now.

I do own a copy of Goetz's Java Concurrency in Practice and that book
has been invaluable in learning how to program multi-threaded Java
applications.

I have two (who knows why) first editions and one second of K&R. I've
even been doing some C/C++ programming for work as of late. I did a lot
of C in the late 80's on OS/2. Those were the days.

knute...

[e.d.pro...@gmail.com]

I haven't tried to learn coding from a book since college in the early 90s.
I recommend going to the source and learning online. It's free and I found it pretty easy to follow. https://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/index.html

[Martin Gregorie]

On Thu, 19 May 2022 12:42:45 -0500, Knute Johnson wrote:

> Hey Martin, how are you doing? Get any gliding in?
>

Not enough: weather and trailer lighting are ongoing issues :-(

However I did have fun 'flying' the club's simulator for launch failure
checks followed by doing them, together with stalling and spinning
exercises for done real from the top of a 3,500ft aero tow in the club's
Perkoz two-seater.

> I don't actually own these books but the Oracle list that sends me stuff
> sent a review of Cay Horstmann's latest iteration of the Core Java
> books. I think folks think these two are some of the best out there.
>
> https://blogs.oracle.com/javamagazine/post/core-java-12th-edition-
horstmann?
source=:em:nw:mt::::RC_WWMK200429P00043C0056:NSL400230298&elq_mid=222615&sh=161306072217121913081213312924132219&cmid=WWMK200429P00043C0056
>

Thanks for the review - looks useful, if expensive. Maybe I should have
mentioned that I'm currently handing on the administrative role of roster
manager in my gliding club.

While in role I wrote a moderately complex Roster editor, which is used to
build the six duty rosters for each 6 month gliding season. It implements
rules to implement checks for duty clashes (somebody who is both an
instructor and a tug pilot must not get both duties on the same weekend,
only one member of a glider syndicate should get a duty on any day so the
others can go fly, .... though its code is fairly simple (all Swing, no
multithreading, all files are CSV format and I wrote a CSV class yonks
ago). I also wrote a CSV editor which is optimised for handling large
files, i.e. more than 16K lines *some* spreadsheets are limited to!, and
for running search & destroy passes across these files - something that
is needed if a rostered member leaves the club immediately after the
roster was published. That HAS happened!

Anyway, my successor wants to learn Java, which is why I'm asking about
Java books.

[Knute Johnson]

They are pricey. Java and Swing are my favorite. As the other fellow
mentioned, the Oracle Java Tutorials are pretty good and they do update
them every couple of years. They work as a pretty good reference for
some methods.

https://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/

I've got a friend talking about getting a glider and he's got a wife and
a Maule that could tow it :-). We'll see. The local airport would be
perfect for soaring. There is almost no traffic. We are always
surprised when we see an airplane on the ramp.

knute...

[e.d.pro...@gmail.com]

> Thanks for the review - looks useful, if expensive. Maybe I should have
> mentioned that I'm currently handing on the administrative role of roster
> manager in my gliding club.
>

This app sounds familiar. Anything you can't figure out from the free Oracle guide, I've found answered on stackoverflow if you know the search terms and enough to identify the answer that actually applies to solve your specific issue, or there may still be a few experienced folks right here who can answer. Just don't ask anyone to do your school work.
Java's not hard to learn if you already know another language with anything in common. It could take awhile to figure out as your first language if you don't know the basics of the objects and primitives.

[Martin Gregorie]

On Thu, 19 May 2022 14:51:44 -0500, Knute Johnson wrote:

> I've got a friend talking about getting a glider and he's got a wife and
> a Maule that could tow it :-). We'll see. The local airport would be
> perfect for soaring. There is almost no traffic. We are always
> surprised when we see an airplane on the ramp.
>

Where is your local airport?

Where would he go to get his glider rating? From the comments in
rec.aviation.soaring that can be a real issue in some parts. I'm well-off
here as there are at least two gliding clubs within reasonable gliding
range and both offer winch launches as well as aero towing. I love
winching: its fun, quick (35 secs from start to 1400ft), and a lot cheaper
than an aero tow.

[Arne Vajhøj]

Java is not a difficult language to learn with a few rare exceptions.

For the language itself just buy any normal Java beginners book
and read it very fast.

Then to go a bit deeper into the finer aspects of Java look
for books like:

Effective Java / Bloch
Java Concurrency in Practice / Goetz

And some specialized books if you need to learn more
specialized topics:
* JSP & servlets
* JSF
* JBoss
* Tomcat
* JAX-RS
* Spring Boot
* OSGI
etc.

Arne

[Knute Johnson]

T92 Mason, Texas. I think there is an active club near Boerne, Texas
about 60 miles south of here. I don't know if he has a rating or not.
I have a glider CFI but it has been a lot of years since I instructed in
gliders. The only time I launched from a winch was in the late 80s when
we were in London on a trip and went out to the London Gliding Club. It
was a cold, windy and overcast day so there wasn't much soaring, a
little ridge lift though. We used to do a lot of auto tows in
California, both from the airport gliding school where I worked and off
of a dry lake in the desert. Those were fun days! I've got about 400
hours in gliders but almost all of it was before 1980. The economics of
a gliding school using aero tow is probably never going to work again.
Auto tow requires at least a mile or more of tow to be effective. The
dry lake was perfect but not conducive to a commercial operation. A
private airport with a winch would be the hot setup.

knute...