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Effective Java, 2nd Edition
- By Joshua Bloch
- Published May 8, 2008 by Addison-Wesley Professional. Part of the Java Series series.
- Copyright 2008
- Dimensions: 7-3/8 X 9-1/4
- Pages: 384
- Edition: 2nd
- Book
- ISBN-10: 0-321-35668-3
- ISBN-13: 978-0-321-35668-0
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Product Author Bios
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 Java™ Puzzlers (Addison-Wesley, 2005) and Java™ Concurrency in Practice (Addison-Wesley, 2006).
Are you looking for a deeper understanding of the Java™ programming language so that you can write code that is clearer, more correct, more robust, and more reusable? Look no further! Effective Java™, 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 Java™, Second Edition, presents the most practical, authoritative guidelines available for writing efficient, well-designed programs.
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73 of 75 people found the following review helpful
A powerful update to an already-classic title, By
This review is from: Effective Java (2nd Edition) (Paperback)
Please see my review of the first edition for my general response. My opinion hasn't changed with the second, so I'll focus on what's new in this review.The second edition was well worth the wait. The number of items are beefed up to 78 from 57. The chapter "Substitutes for C Constructs" is gone, but replaced by more contemporary material on "Generics" and "Enums and Annotations." Some first edition items have been amended to address features new to Java since the first edition was released. Some new items also address concurrency, favoring it over traditional Java threads. As expected, the cases for each item are methodically and persuaisvely made. If you are particularly interested in concurrency, also consider Java Concurrency in Practice. The item discussions use boldface liberally to highlight key points,... Read more
50 of 52 people found the following review helpful
Simply a great book!, By
This review is from: Effective Java (2nd Edition) (Paperback)
Effective Java, Second Edition by Joshua Bloch is certainly the best Java book I have read in a long time. As a disclaimer, I never read the first edition and I am thus unable to compare the two editions. Effective Java, Second Edition is a mostly easy and fun read providing you with many insights and best practices on how to use Java effectively. It certainly is not a book for the beginner just starting out learning Java. For that purpose you may want to take a look at Thinking in Java by Bruce Eckel instead. Nevertheless, Effective Java would serve as an excellent follow-up.In Effective Java, Joshua Bloch does a great job describing best practices that you as developer will find useful on a daily basis. For example, I really found his description of the builder pattern (Item 2, page 11) quite interesting. Another Item that fascinated me, was Item 15 (page 73) - "Minimize mutability". Both items are part of a broader theme throughout the book that promotes creating code... Read more
70 of 76 people found the following review helpful
Good, but not all items are equal,
This review is from: Effective Java (2nd Edition) (Paperback)
If you want to know the good things about this book, read the other reviews, many of which I agree with. This review just states what makes the book 4 stars for me instead of 5, because none of the other reviews I read pointed them out.Most of the items in book are very good, a few are great and well worth the price of the book and the time it takes to read it, but some have to be taken with a grain of salt. They probably make sense if you come from the background of working on the Java API team, as the author does, but wouldn't make much sense on any of the projects I have worked on. The problem is that all are presented as universal truths and only through experience can you tell which truly are and which can be ignored. I also feel that some of the items need to be tempered with just plain practical usefulness. I know that programming a certain way makes the code bullet proof from certain errors by not compiling if those errors are introduced, but if the... Read more |
Online Sample Chapter
Creating and Destroying Java Objects
Sample Pages
Table of Contents
Foreword xi
Preface xiii
Acknowledgments xvii
Chapter 1: Introduction 1
Chapter 2: Creating and Destroying Objects 5
Item 1: Consider static factory methods instead of constructors 5
Item 2: Consider a builder when faced with many constructor
parameters 11
Item 3: Enforce the singleton property with a private constructor 17
Item 4: Enforce noninstantiability with a private constructor 19
Item 5: Avoid creating unnecessary objects 20
Item 6: Eliminate obsolete object references 24
Item 7: Avoid finalizers 27
Chapter 3: Methods Common to All Objects 33
Item 8: Obey the general contract when overriding equals 33
Item 9: Always override hashCode when you override equals 45
Item 10: Always override toString 51
Item 11: Override clone judiciously 54
Item 12: Consider implementing Comparable 62
Chapter 4: Classes and Interfaces 67
Item 13: Minimize the accessibility of classes and members 67
Item 14: In public classes, use accessor methods, not public fields 71
Item 15: Minimize mutability 73
Item 16: Favor composition over inheritance 81
Item 17: Design and document for inheritance or else prohibit it 87
Item 18: Prefer interfaces to abstract classes 93
Item 19: Use interfaces only to define types 98
Item 20: Prefer class hierarchies to tagged classes 100
Item 21: Use function objects to represent strategies 103
Item 22: Favor static member classes over nonstatic 106
Chapter 5: Generics 109
Item 23: Don't use raw types in new code 109
Item 24: Eliminate unchecked warnings 116
Item 25: Prefer lists to arrays 119
Item 26: Favor generic types 124
Item 27: Favor generic methods 129
Item 28: Use bounded wildcards to increase API flexibility 134
Item 29: Consider typesafe heterogeneous containers 142
Chapter 6: Enums and Annotations 147
Item 30: Use enums instead of int constants 147
Item 31: Use instance fields instead of ordinals 158
Item 32: Use EnumSet instead of bit fields 159
Item 33: Use EnumMap instead of ordinal indexing 161
Item 34: Emulate extensible enums with interfaces 165
Item 35: Prefer annotations to naming patterns 169
Item 36: Consistently use the Override annotation 176
Item 37: Use marker interfaces to define types 179
Chapter 7: Methods 181
Item 38: Check parameters for validity 181
Item 39: Make defensive copies when needed 184
Item 40: Design method signatures carefully 189
Item 41: Use overloading judiciously 191
Item 42: Use varargs judiciously 197
Item 43: Return empty arrays or collections, not nulls 201
Item 44: Write doc comments for all exposed API elements 203
Chapter 8: General Programming 209
Item 45: Minimize the scope of local variables 209
Item 46: Prefer for-each loops to traditional for loops 212
Item 47: Know and use the libraries 215
Item 48: Avoid float and double if exact answers are required 218
Item 49: Prefer primitive types to boxed primitives 221
Item 50: Avoid strings where other types are more appropriate 224
Item 51: Beware the performance of string concatenation 227
Item 52: Refer to objects by their interfaces 228
Item 53: Prefer interfaces to reflection 230
Item 54: Use native methods judiciously 233
Item 55: Optimize judiciously 234
Item 56: Adhere to generally accepted naming conventions 237
Chapter 9: Exceptions 241
Item 57: Use exceptions only for exceptional conditions 241
Item 58: Use checked exceptions for recoverable conditions and runtime exceptions for programming errors 244
Item 59: Avoid unnecessary use of checked exceptions 246
Item 60: Favor the use of standard exceptions 248
Item 61: Throw exceptions appropriate to the abstraction 250
Item 62: Document all exceptions thrown by each method 252
Item 63: Include failure-capture information in detail messages 254
Item 64: Strive for failure atomicity 256
Item 65: Don’t ignore exceptions 258
Chapter 10: Concurrency 259
Item 66: Synchronize access to shared mutable data 259
Item 67: Avoid excessive synchronization 265
Item 68: Prefer executors and tasks to threads 271
Item 69: Prefer concurrency utilities to wait and notify 273
Item 70: Document thread safety 278
Item 71: Use lazy initialization judiciously 282
Item 72: Don’t depend on the thread scheduler 286
Item 73: Avoid thread groups 288
Chapter 11: Serialization 289
Item 74: Implement Serializable judiciously 289
Item 75: Consider using a custom serialized form 295
Item 76: Write readObject methods defensively 302
Item 77: For instance control, prefer enum types to readResolve 309
Item 78: Consider serialization proxies instead of serialized instances 313
Appendix: Items Corresponding to First Edition 317
References 321
Index of Patterns and Idioms 327
Index 331
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