"Good" Java book? (not off-topic)
Hi, cafe, I find myself in the unusual position of having to recommend a few books on Java to people who want to use it professionally. As the people demanding this live in Burundi, I can't really say "Learn Haskell". Odds are they won't find a job there if they don't use mainstream languages. Is there any book on Java that approaches the language in a way that doesn't make programmers impervious to FP and Haskell? Not meaning to insult anybody here, I too learned Java before Haskell. But I also think it made learning Haskell much more difficult. Cheers, Ivan.
Is there any book on Java that approaches the language in a way that doesn't make programmers impervious to FP and Haskell?
Two standard books are "Effective Java (EJ)" and "Java Concurrency in Practice (JCIP)". They aren't introductory; but I think they are a good idea if you want to use Java on a professional basis. And at least JCIP advocates immutability. Cheers, Simon [1] http://jcip.net/ [1] http://java.sun.com/docs/books/effective/
How about recommending a Scala book instead of Java? That would teach a
functional mindset, and on stepping back to Java, they'd just have a
different syntax for types, and some missing stuff.
On the Java side, I own "A Little Java, a Few Patterns" by Friedmann and
Felleisen. This would certainly not make them impervious to anything
functional, but I don't think it serves as a general introduction to Java.
Maybe it would be suitable in addition to another book. I can second the
recommendation of "Effective Java".
- Chris
On Fri, Feb 17, 2012 at 12:19 AM, Ivan Perez
Hi, cafe, I find myself in the unusual position of having to recommend a few books on Java to people who want to use it professionally. As the people demanding this live in Burundi, I can't really say "Learn Haskell". Odds are they won't find a job there if they don't use mainstream languages.
Is there any book on Java that approaches the language in a way that doesn't make programmers impervious to FP and Haskell?
Not meaning to insult anybody here, I too learned Java before Haskell. But I also think it made learning Haskell much more difficult.
Cheers, Ivan.
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I've always found Bruce Eckel's "Thinking in Java" the best introductory book to the practice of object oriented programming and Java. There's a sample online http://www.mindviewinc.com/TIJ4/BookSampleDownload.php Whether this is in concordance with FP principles or not is a different thing, but the point is to introduce OO and Java, isn't it? Anyway, I don't think it's damaging if you later get to use Haskell and formal methods (I went myself through that as well). Cheers,
participants (4)
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Christoph Breitkopf -
Ivan Perez -
Simon Hengel -
Álvaro García Pérez