21 Dec '04 - + 17 - 26 Effective Java
I just read, or possibly re-read,
Effective Java: Programming Language Guide
by Joshua Bloch. This is a classic book in Java, and deservedly
so. I've already changed a lot of my Java development
practices because of reading the book, from using final a lot more to
being more careful in my implementations of toString() and
hashCode().
Effective Java is very similar in structure to Peter
Haggar's
Practical
Java: Programming Language Guide, but the focus is
different.
Practical Java
focuses more on details of Java development, explaining the difference
between arrays and Vectors (it's also a little old, obviously) and the
difference between primitives and wrapper classes. Bloch
assumes
a higher level of development prowess in his readers, so he starts a
bit higher, but then gets to more complicated (and often
under-discussed) topics like threading and serialization.
While I was reading
Effective
Java, I felt that I had read it
before. Perhaps that is due to the similarity to to
Practical Java.
Perhaps I had borrowed it years ago. Perhaps I had read
enough
snippets when using it as a resource that it was familiar.
Or
maybe it's just that the advice inside makes so much sense and was so
well written that it seemed not to be new.
I'm really glad that I read
Effective
Java this month; my code is already better
for it, and isn't that the main reason we read technical
books?
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