Murach's Beginning Java 2, JDK 5 - Softcover

Doug Lowe; Joel Murach; Andrea Steelman

3.67

6 ratings by Goodreads

9781890774295: Murach's Beginning Java 2, JDK 5

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1890774294 ISBN 13: 9781890774295

Publisher: Mike Murach & Associates, 2005

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For the current edition of this book, please see Murach's Java SE 6 (ISBN 9781890774424).

If you want to be a professional Java developer, this book is designed for you. It moves at a quick professional pace, yet doesn't leave you wondering what in the world it's talking about. As one programmer said in an email to us: "It cuts right to the essential information, providing the perfect balance between too many details and too much information. Example apps are incredible - they give a great starting point. I bought another well-known Java book, but they crammed too much information in it, to the point that I spent several hours trying to learn what I learned from your book in about 45 minutes."

As you'd expect, this book teaches you all the core Java skills you need on the job, showing you how to take advantage of time-saving Java features like:

* the Scanner class
* type-safe enumerations
* enhanced for loops
* typed collections
* generics
* autoboxing
* the StringBuilder class

But beyond that, it gives you the practical training you need in both object-oriented programming and data access programming. In particular, it shows you how to use a 3-tiered architecture to separate the business classes, presentation classes, and database classes of an application. It shows you practical techniques for populating business objects with data from files or databases. And it shows you how to use inheritance, polymorphism, interfaces, and the factory pattern in a way that is not just understandable but also reflects what's done in the real world. The result is, you'll soon be writing Java applications the way the best professionals do.

To download the book applications...
You can download the code for the book applications, the starting code and test data for the exercises in the book, and sample chapters from the Murach web site.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

From the Publisher:

Of course "Murach's Beginning Java 2, JDK 5" presents all of the important new features of Java 5.0 (also known as version 1.5), but here are the four reasons that I believe this is the beginning Java book you should buy first!

1. The first six chapters get you off to a fast start. By the time you complete these chapters, you’ll be writing bulletproof, object-oriented applications with business classes and objects. These chapters work well for the complete beginner. But they also get the experienced developer up-to-speed fast.

2. The class summaries throughout the book help you master the Java API and save you hours of research. Although most books present dozens of coding examples that illustrate the use of some Java classes, they don’t try to summarize all of the classes, constructors, and methods that you’ll use the most. Our book does both. For instance, to learn how to use the new LinkedList class, you’ll first see a summary of its primary constructors and methods. Then, you’ll see coding examples that show you how you can apply those constructors and methods. This can save you hundreds of hours of research over the course of the book.

3. Our unique paired pages method of presentation makes our book work better for both training and reference. If you haven’t ever used one of our books before, maybe you should download chapter 1 or 2 to see how our "paired pages"—with explanation and perspective on the left page and essential details and coding examples on the right page—work. First, the "paired pages" help you learn faster because you read less. Second, they provide the best reference format that there is. That’s so important with a language like Java because no one can remember the details of its hundreds of classes, constructors, and methods.

4. Chapters 7 and 8 show you how to use inheritance, polymorphism, and interfaces in a way that is both practical and understandable. You won’t find any toy applications or cat and dog objects in these chapters. Instead, you’ll study practical applications that show you how to use inheritance, polymorphism, interfaces, type-safe enumerations, and the factory pattern. This at last takes the mystery out of object-oriented programming. And we just haven’t seen this done right in any other book.

From the Author:

Java 1.5 is a major improvement over previous versions of Java, with many new language features such as generics, autoboxing, the enhanced for loop, and the Scanner class. When Joel and I looked at these new features, we realized that it would be a challenge to integrate them into the book. Most Java books take the easy way out and cover the new features in a separate chapter, almost as an afterthought. That may save the author's time when they revise their books, but it sure doesn't do the reader any favors. So we worked hard to incorporate the new features into the book from the very start, and to use the new features throughout the book wherever they're appropriate.

An even more challenging issue was deciding on a useful set of Java features and API classes while holding the book to a reasonable size. Mark Twain once said that if he'd had more time, he would have written less. I think the authors of the 1,000+ page Java tomes should have taken that to heart. They tend to ramble on about anything and everything, filling up pages with tables of fields and methods you'll never use. Yet amazingly enough, they manage to gloss over or completely ignore some of the most important aspects of real-world Java programming, like validating input data or doing decimal arithmetic correctly. So we focused on a useful set of JAVA features, then set about to show how to use those features in real-world situations.

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