A Little Java, A Few Patterns

First a bit on the Kindle version:One star is subtracted for the electronic conversion. I fully understand that they needed a fixed layout and font-size in order to keep the original two-column layout work with the code examples without overflowing, but this comes at the cost of losing all the benefits of the layout that Kindle provides. The font also looks a bit weird - possibly a pdf->mobi conversion with OCR. Reading on my regular Kindle is taxing, but it is ok. The screen size of the Kindle DX is probably a far better match, as is my computer screen, but I cannot stand to read using that for long. I managed to read it on my Kindle, but it was annoying. Just a word of warning.As to the actual content of the book, I found myself enjoying it (after a while). I have to admit that there were some frustrations/questions that were nagging me for most of the book, but they were dealt with when just a tenth of the book remained. This was due to the author's wish to gradually build up a sense of how one ends up with the final version of the Visitor pattern, but I am unsure of the real value in showing so many less desirable versions of it first.The style is very reminiscent of The Little Schemer (TLS), a book I have on my shelf, but one I never finished - mostly due to not knowing how to run the code. This book actually starts with a section on how one can test the code, so that is not a problem here. The other difference from TLS is that I read this book with a good working knowledge of Java. Thus I never felt the need to actually test any of the code.One problem I have with the book is its class hierarchy and the names given to classes. The examples often use food classes and one of them is the shish kebab and its ingredients. There we have a class Shish and several ingredients like Onion, Lamb, etc that subclasses Shish. I find that very weird. I would think that a Shish HAS-A ingredent, not that an ingredient IS-A Shish. If the author had just somewhat refactored the classes to use composition I would be OK with the whole thing. The other examples have the same problem. Other than the issues with how the class hierarchy was composed, the code is quite nice and what you end up with in the end is very elegant code. I believe that the reviewers that most violently object to the code have not been exposes to much advanced OO design before and anything else than getters and setters probably freaks them out. It is not a shining jewel in my book collection, but it is interesting and absolutely worth reading. The last 20% percent of the book makes the initial frustration quite worth it.In short, I recommend reading it, if just for the experience of the different teaching format.

This book is to Java what the Little Schemer (same author) is to scheme. Though, more concepts are covered in the Little Schemer (esp. at the end). Nevertheless, this book like the little schemer teaches recursive thinking and programming by: user defined types and their respective operations. This is the key theme throughout this book and is not mentioned explicitly. Some of the patterns mentioned are composite, visitor, decorator, and template.The humor is subtle and the style and tone are friendly--which is necessary for the complexity of the material. On a related note, all the reviewers giving this book 1 star are obviously people looking for 'yet another java book.' One viewer noted its style of code, which I found wonderfully elegant. The structure of the book was also criticized: questions and answers. This teaching styling of asking instead of telling is very effective and fresh.Last point to make: this book teaches OO design much better than most simply because of the focus on object design/relationships rather than java syntax (which 'yet another java book' has covered mind-numbingly well).For java specific books (for most programmers) this book and Effective Java will be plenty.

Here we go again! The last book in The Little X series. I reviewed all previous books The Little Schemer, The Seasoned Schemer, The Reasoned Schemer, The Little MLer, The Little Prover, and now it's time for the last adventure with A Little Java, A Few Patterns.Just like all other books in the series, this fun little book is a dialog between the authors and the reader. This style of writing is called Socratic teaching method. The Socratic method is probably the most effect way to teach new concepts because it's an on-going dialog that keeps you engaged. I wish more books were written this way. I'll have to fix this situation by writing a couple books in this style myself.This book has nothing to do with learning Java. It's about having a fun adventure in the world of computation. Authors don't really care about Java. No one cares about Java. The authors want you to think about computation using object-oriented concepts - classes, interfaces, methods, inheritance, objects, and recursion. Truly mastering programming requires understanding the nature of computation and this book teaches exactly that. It doesn't teach Java. It teaches computation. If you want to, you can go ahead and learn Java later or you can learn C++, or Objective C. The knowledge you'll gain from this book will help you master any object oriented language 200x quicker than by reading conventional books written by authors who have no appreciation or understanding of computation theory.I'm waiting for authors to write a new book now! The Little Prover that I shared last time was excellent and I want authors to top that! Do a book purely on set theory and build up computation based on sets. Do a book on modern theory of computation that starts with alphabets, builds automata, builds turing machines, shows what computation can and can't do and ends with incompleteness theory. Or I'll do it!I've placed this book #28 in my Top 100 Mathematics, Coding and Science books list. Google for >>catonmat top 100 math coding science books<< to find my list.

I read this book about 7 years ago; it is still in my bookshelf. I actually learned a lot of OO ideas from this little book which I think had been deceptively titled; it should have been named "A little book of OO patterns in java" -I thought it was an introductory book in java at that time and I end up learning about interface, abstract, patterns, etc. before I even compiled my first"Hello World" in java.

"A Little Java, A Few Patterns" really teaches OO design & implementation in Java.