Java for practitioners. An introduction and reference to Java and object orientation (Q4256499)

Java (from Sun Microsystems) is a modern, platform independent, object-oriented programming language. It is on the best way to replace C++. The extensive book is divided in five parts with 51 chapters. It starts with an introduction to the fundamentals of object-oriented programming. The main parts (number 2 and 3) of the book explain in detail the core of the Java language and present the Java hierarchy of classes which meanwhile has grown up to 1500 classes. A presentation of all these classes along with explanations of possible applications surely would blast off every textbook. So some Java themes like the Native Language Interface only are discussed very shortly or not at all like Jini, the Java plug-and-play development. Mainly the description is comprehensive and partly goes into the depth. There are many useful and instructive examples, which has been tested and run under the versions 1.0, 1.0.2 and 1.1 of Sun's JDK (Java Development Kit). The text presents Java 2 (JDK 1.2), but this version only has been in beta release at the time the book has been written. The forth part of the book is an introduction to object-oriented design and development. It presents and uses the modern Unified Modelling Language (UML). The fifth and last part which only consists of a single chapter risks a look to the (Java-) future. The text is easy to read and easy to understand but it assumes some familiarity with standard computing aspects and with a procedural language such as Pascal or C. The book realizes a good didactical concept which makes reading useful for students and for teachers as well. Many chapters contain a commented list of further readings and some programming exercises. To each exercise a guidance to the solution is given. Whole a chapter is designed as a multiple choice test (together with the solutions). Detailed comments on typical programming errors round off the didactical concept. The book is an useful Java tutorial and can be recommended to students, teachers and beginning Java developers.