Precious book on Java – Effective Java by Joshua Bloch

Before getting into some useful reviews, I would like to write something about myself 4 years back. I was an ordinary Engineer (even now) and learning Networking. I said to myself, I would never like Java in my life. But due to various (???) reasons, I was forced to work in Java. My initial days with Java were terrible and I was stumbling like any other newbie. But slowly, I was made to like Java. It took me two years to write some code with a lot of passion. I should honestly say that it is due to this great book “Effective Java”. This is absolutely not an over rating and the book deserves much more credits as it changed my perspective on Java.

By Java, I mean Core Java. This book made to understand the elegance of Java and its strong APIs. While reading I often refer Java Libraries written by the author of this book. Each of his words has a meaning to it. The one two three four chapters I like most are Threads, Exceptions, Object Creation and Deletion and of course Classes and Interfaces. Though, the other chapters are equally good, I particularly like these four chapters because they are cornerstone to Java. The author has given a lot of Best Practices and if you apply those best practices, your code is much maintainable, readable and comprehensible.

Threads offer you a greater flexibility but writing thread safe application is harder. The current day applications have seriously bugs and if they are running properly, it is nothing more than mere coincidence. The book also explains the results of over synchronization and wait/notify. The chapter on exceptions is more fulfilling and it gives two great thoughts – Exception Chaining and Exception Translation which is handy when your application has many layers. The book gives thoughts on object creation, object deletion, classes and interfaces.

This is a right book for you to have a copy of this book if you are really interested in writing code effectively. This book helps you to think Java in an art from.