Java Magazine, September/October 2017
ORACLE COM JAVAMAGAZINE SEPTEMBER OCTOBER 2017 10 The name Bruce Eckel might not be familiar to many readers but hes a Java Champion who had a seminal influence on teaching Java to programmers His principal contribution was a book called Thinking in Java which was a fat tutorial on all aspects of the language It was a sequel to an earlier work on C that was distinguished by lengthy explanations of object orientation that were integrated with instruction on the language details So you learned how to think in an OO way as you acquired language skills This approach to Java went through four editions covering up through Java 5 when Eckel soured on the language and moved on to other work Per the introduction to this volume the changes he saw in Java 8 brought him back to the fold As with his previous books Eckel follows his own path in both content and production For example this book exists solely in electronic form and is available only from Google Play It is also selfedited and laid out by the author Ill come back to this in a moment The content is unique compared with the formal tutorials that Ive reviewed several times in this column Eckel uses a friendly informal approach with a compelling come look over my shoulder as I do this tone Its undeniably engaging Because of this were in this together conviviality however you need to follow where Eckel takes you Where your interests coincide with his youll be well fed An excellent example of this is his discussion of CompletableFuture which is one of the most detailed explanations Ive seen in any tutorial And its remarkably approachable However when Eckel gets into topics of little interest youll find yourself flipping pages quickly For example his summary of Java operators has 13 pages of one line examples Its a recap of the preceding 29 pages on operators In total operators take up 57 pages In Cay Horstmanns Core Java itself a massive volume operators consume a mere nine pages which I expect is more to the liking of most readers Where the book really shines is predictably in the explanations of how core features in Java are the implementation of object orientation In these discussions Eckel deftly compares Javas way of doing things with how theyre done in C and occasionally Python If you know those languages especially C youll find this book a very interesting read Despite all this unique goodness and there is a surprising amount given how many excellent Java tutorials already exist I encountered two frustrating limitations The first is the layout which works well on tablets but is very unsatisfactory in a browser Because Im far more likely to read java books ON JAVA 8 By Bruce Eckel
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