Thin Java coverage in a fat Java book

These days, Java and hyperbole have a habit of going hand in hand. That’s especially the case with Java books, which must shout for your attention above the roar of dozens of rivals.

As a result, when confronted with a book entitled Java 1.1: The Complete Reference, Second Edition) there’s a tendency for the well-traveled Java bookworm to be more than a little suspicious.

Despite 1,013 pages of text, an additional 14 pages of index, and a glowing front-cover endorsement from Marimba’s Kim Polese, Java 1.1: The Complete Reference is hardly the be-all-and-end-all on Sun’s much-ballyhooed programming language. It’s too big to be a handy reference volume, such as Java in a Nutshell (O’Reilly, 1998), too broad to function as a helpful tutorial, such as Ivor Horton’s Beginning Java (Wrox, 1997), and too vague to provide the sort of valuable specificity you find in books such as Abstract Data Types in Java (McGraw-Hill, 1998).

Java 1.1: The Complete Reference is a kitchen sink of a book that sacrifices focus in pursuit of completeness. It provides a brief background on Java for those with a historical bent, it explains the differences between versions 1.0 and 1.1 for those who have been cranking out Java code for the past few years, it targets “traditional” programmers by explaining how to migrate to Java from C++, it surveys the language and its libraries for those who need a hefty reference, and it offers an eclectic set of application examples — everything from a “dynamic billboard” to an online Scrabble game for programmers who learn best by doing. Although Java 1.1: The Complete Reference is undeniably huge, it offers only small bursts of brilliance. Its elementary explanation of classes and objects will be extremely helpful for those who are brand new to this sort of programming, its explanation of the Applet class is lucid and succinct, and its periodic “Remember” notes provide valuable nuggets of common sense and wisdom that should help keep everyone on track.

Despite all this book has to recommend it, it’s difficult to envision a person who would actually read Java 1.1: The Complete Reference cover to cover, but easy to imagine thousands who could glean valuable information from one or more of its voluminous sections. Although the wheat-to-chaff ratio may seem annoying and unwieldy for the power programmer, such a complete reference could prove valuable to a novice, especially when used in conjunction with an elementary tutorial or a classroom course.

So if you’re thinking of clearing your desk of a stack of dog-eared Java books and replacing them with Java 1.1: The Complete Reference, don’t be too hasty. But if you’re relatively new to Java and would like to further refine your understanding of this programming language, this book may help to bring it into sharper view for you.