Java(TM) Puzzlers : Traps, Pitfalls, and Corner Cases

Killer Game Programming in Java

Swing Hacks (Hacks)

Head First Design Patterns

Beginners Guide

Java After Hours : 10 Projects You'll Never Do at Work

Format: Paperback
Author: Steve Holzner
ReleaseDate: 08 June, 2005
Publisher: Sams
Rating:

Fun book


The strength of this book is not that it has complete code for 10 projects. This is a fun book to advance your programming and Java skills a bit. It is that each of these projects have nearly unlimited potential for adding in features.

Take the aquarium for instance. I added in a simple GUI popup to control how many fish, their individual speeds, supports unlimited fish photos, change backgrounds, add in whales, sharks, dolphins crabs, ect. In addition, the shark can randomly pick a fish every so often and eat it, along with sounds from Jaws. Next I am going to add in fisherman and divers.

The great thing is that all of the projects are this way. Even if you are not inclined to etend the projects, there is still alot to learn from the basic projects.

There is complete source code on the books web site. BTW, the Aquarium does not feature multithreaded fish. Each fish is not a thread. There is exactly one explicit thread in the program. .

Not so great
I try to work on a project and end up getting confused as to which class I'm working on, or where everything fits together. This book isn't as fun to read as it might tell you. It isn't easy to follow and it just glides through things nonchalantly, but doesn't bother to give a finished product that I can find.

I tried the beginners fish aquarium class, but couldn't get too far because of formatting. Tried the slapshot game and got lost as to which class was which and which code went where. It's great if you want something to sit on your shelf and look pretty, maybe for moderate reference, but not practical or easy enough to read. And this is coming from someone who has read many types of these books in the past. .

Fun stuff to continue your Java journey...
But sometimes you learn more about a language if you can work on fun stuff. In most tech language tutorials and how-to articles, you end up getting sample programs and projects that are "formal" or work-related. Steven Holzner moves into that territory in the book Java After Hours. There's some stuff in here I'm going to mess around with. . .

Contents: Introduction; Making Fish Swim in the Multithreaded Aquarium; Slapshot! The Interactive Hockey Game; The Graphicizer Image-Editing and Conversion Tool; Creating Stunning Graphics with Painter; Chatting on the Internet with the Chat Room; Who's There? Logging Access to your Website with WebLogger; Running Any Program via Remote Control with the Robot; Creating a Custom Web Browser in Java: The Browser Project; Typing Across the Internet: The Intercom Project; Getting a Graphical Weather Forecast: The Forecaster Project; Index

I'll admit that I have to give high marks to any book that mixes Java and my favorite sport. . . hockey! :)

Seriously, Holzner does some interesting things that make this book stand out. By using projects and examples that are more personal and "fun" in nature, it's much more likely that the reader will become absorbed in the material and pick up the particular concepts almost without trying. He also uses projects that are graphical in nature instead of relying on cold, dry server-based routines that just print some words on the screen. It's one thing to learn about multithreading by trying to create "processes" that can run concurrently. It's a whole different learning experience when the threads are fish in an aquarium, and you can truly watch the threads run and interact. This is something you don't see often in most books today. And when you get done with each chapter, you actually have something visible you can look back at and enjoy.

This isn't a book to get if you are looking to learn Java from the ground up. There's no "from A to Z" progression through the language. But if you've already learned Java and are looking to learn some new techniques and concepts, this is an excellent "next step" to take in your Java journey.