Dick Seabrook asks:
> What do you consider your class bible for Java 2?
> I keep running into classes and methods I have forgotten or didn't know
> much about anyway, resulting in dumping a class' methods to find out their
> activation. I'm using 4 texts for reference at the moment and none of 'em
> seems to have anywhere near the full story on ALL the jdk1.2 classes.
Well, I end up using the online docs, from sun, 'cause I'm lazy.
Something I've been meaning to do for a couple months now is
point a crawler at the java docs and generate a big multi-level
bookmark file of the APIs (JDK, Servlet, etc), branches (java.io,
java.lang, java.net, etc), classes (java.lang.String,
java.lang.StringBuffer, etc) and finally methods and instance
variables. So I can *quickly* look up a method or variable. Not to
mention, it'd be nice to put it in a format where it can be added to
my browser as a separate bookmark pulldown, to avoid cluttering up my
regular bookmarks. Sooner or later.
Beyond that, well the second half of _Java in A Nutshell_ is
supposed to be a class API quick reference, not that I've ever found
it useful for that. Every time I've needed to look something up, I
needed more detail than just method name and argument types.
Most of the other books I've looked at just seem to regurgitate
the JDK API docs. So far, Core Java, Volumes 1 and 2 are the most
useful books I've seen - a friend had a set last year. Not *much*
more information than the API docs, but sometimes just that one little
detail can solve all your problems.
By nature I avoid books that look big enough to kill a good sized
dog if dropped on one (as a former techical writer, I'm rather
arrogant about that - if you can't explain it in 400 or so pages,
you're probably a) not trying hard enough, or b) trying to write more
than one book). But time after time, I went through every book in my
set, and my neighbor's set, and after five or six books, got down to
my friend's desk and found the answer in Core Java. Not much of an
answer, but enough, and more than the other books included.
I still prefer other books (for example, various O'Reilly books)
for overviews, introductions, and discussions of topics, but for
straight reference, I'm hooked on Core Java. Now if only they'd come
out with a new edition of Core Java Vol 2...
Of course, there are O'Reilly books I haven't looked at yet, in
this vein.
Steven J. Owens
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