Reviewed by Conrad Weisert, April 26, 1999
Van der Linden treats the readers as respected colleagues. Unlike most Java
insiders he doesn't try to persuade us that Java is the perfect tool for every
situation. Although his enthusiasm is obvious, he candidly concedes some of
Java shortcomings and particularly egregious flaws, e.g. the notorious
Calendar/Date
abomination (pp 401-404); the choice of static
1 to denote
class member (p 49).
I was particularly pleased to find quickly answers to issues that were either omitted from or hard to find in two-dozen other well-respected Java books2 on my shelf. From here on, this will be the first place I look for general information on Java programming.
The book is suitable either as a text for an OOP/Java course or for self-study by an experienced programmer. Van der Linden's informal style is clear and the examples reasonably well motivated.
Like most other writers on Java, van der Linden fails to exploit the object paradigm for elementary (as opposed to composite and container) data types. Their aversion may stem from Java's clumsy syntax for everyday arithmetic and comparison operations.
To represent amounts of Money, Distances, or
Durations, for example, as primitive
int or double
data items forgoes
the benefits of type safety and localized knowledge, and naively reverts
to the world of Fortran programming.
On page 60 van der Linden actually recommends the extreme
anti-object-oriented quasi-class approach.
Since I know of no other Java text
1 A peculiarity originated by C++.
2 In particular it's a lot easier than the second edition of David Flanagan's Java in a Nutshell.
3 If you know of one, please tell us.
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