Effective Java: Edition 2

Joshua Bloch

May 2008 · Addison-Wesley Professional

About this eBook

Are you looking for a deeper understanding of the JavaTM programming language so that you can write code that is clearer, more correct, more robust, and more reusable? Look no further! Effective JavaTM, Second Edition, brings together seventy-eight indispensable programmer’s rules of thumb: working, best-practice solutions for the programming challenges you encounter every day.

This highly anticipated new edition of the classic, Jolt Award-winning work has been thoroughly updated to cover Java SE 5 and Java SE 6 features introduced since the first edition. Bloch explores new design patterns and language idioms, showing you how to make the most of features ranging from generics to enums, annotations to autoboxing.

Each chapter in the book consists of several “items” presented in the form of a short, standalone essay that provides specific advice, insight into Java platform subtleties, and outstanding code examples. The comprehensive descriptions and explanations for each item illuminate what to do, what not to do, and why.

Highlights include:

• New coverage of generics, enums, annotations, autoboxing, the for-each loop, varargs, concurrency utilities, and much more
• Updated techniques and best practices on classic topics, including objects, classes, libraries, methods, and serialization
• How to avoid the traps and pitfalls of commonly misunderstood subtleties of the language
• Focus on the language and its most fundamental libraries: java.lang, java.util, and, to a lesser extent, java.util.concurrent and java.io

Simply put, Effective JavaTM, Second Edition, presents the most practical, authoritative guidelines available for writing efficient, well-designed programs.

Ratings and reviews

The book provides a comprehensive overview of the most widely used patterns and idioms that are used in Java and some other mainstream object oriented programming languages. The book will also explain you why you should not blindly use some of the built in Java capabilities such as serialization, and how to work around all the evil the comes along with the power of Java.

This book is really required reading for any Java programmer. Unfortunatly the conversion to ebook is rather poor. Inconsistant style issues, random sub-scripts etc. Please proofread! It's useable but very distracting.

I am halfway through this book. This book give ideas I have never came across in my few years of Java career. The way this the rules organized into 10 chapters, makes it easier to pick and read the sections you are more interested. This is one of those best books that could shape your Java knowledge no matter how long you have been coding.

About the author

Joshua Bloch is chief Java architect at Google and a Jolt Award winner. He was previously a distinguished engineer at Sun Microsystems and a senior systems designer at Transarc. Bloch led the design and implementation of numerous Java platform features, including JDK 5.0 language enhancements and the award-winning Java Collections Framework. He coauthored JavaTM Puzzlers (Addison-Wesley, 2005) and JavaTM Concurrency in Practice (Addison-Wesley, 2006).