A review by fingolfintek
Effective Java by Joshua Bloch
3.0
Well, I've been staring at the screen and trying to rate this book for at least 20 minutes, all the while changing my mind every other minute or so. Writing a review for it is making me equally conflicted but at least in the review I'm not limited to only two options (3 or 4 stars, if anyone's wondering).
First thing to say is that Joshua Bloch is a competent enough author - a bit dry but always to the point, clear, precise and thorough. And he really knows his Java - so much so that I regret not having read this book (well, the previous edition at least) some 10 years ago when I was just starting out - it's definitely more useful to beginners and I could have learned a ton!
The items themselves present the reader with sound advice but the choice of the items is what I take issue with:
* some items read like they were written ~15 years ago for C++ folks moving to Java (enums and bitmaps, native code warnings)
* others read like they were written to highlight old anti-patterns that probably very few devs use in this day and age (finalizers, clone, Serializables, wait/notify, yield...)
* a few have disproportionate amount of space devoted to them given their importance (see previous point and add to it toString, hashCode & equals and probably a few others)
* lots of them (by author's own admission) are more applicable of you're writing a library or framework intended for wide audiences/public use and seem needlessly defensive
Summed up, the criticism amounts to this - while all the items included within are valid, the book would have had more to offer and reader to gain from cutting some of them short (or throwing them out completely) and replacing them with more practically useful items. What about I/O? Don't tell me there's nothing to say. And where are CompletableFutures, asynchronous and non-blocking programming? More from java.util.concurrency and Java's standard library in general?
Or maybe I'm just a splendid curmudgeon in the making...
First thing to say is that Joshua Bloch is a competent enough author - a bit dry but always to the point, clear, precise and thorough. And he really knows his Java - so much so that I regret not having read this book (well, the previous edition at least) some 10 years ago when I was just starting out - it's definitely more useful to beginners and I could have learned a ton!
The items themselves present the reader with sound advice but the choice of the items is what I take issue with:
* some items read like they were written ~15 years ago for C++ folks moving to Java (enums and bitmaps, native code warnings)
* others read like they were written to highlight old anti-patterns that probably very few devs use in this day and age (finalizers, clone, Serializables, wait/notify, yield...)
* a few have disproportionate amount of space devoted to them given their importance (see previous point and add to it toString, hashCode & equals and probably a few others)
* lots of them (by author's own admission) are more applicable of you're writing a library or framework intended for wide audiences/public use and seem needlessly defensive
Summed up, the criticism amounts to this - while all the items included within are valid, the book would have had more to offer and reader to gain from cutting some of them short (or throwing them out completely) and replacing them with more practically useful items. What about I/O? Don't tell me there's nothing to say. And where are CompletableFutures, asynchronous and non-blocking programming? More from java.util.concurrency and Java's standard library in general?
Or maybe I'm just a splendid curmudgeon in the making...