Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com

Raves for the First Edition!

“I sure wish I had this book ten years ago. Some might think that I don’t need any Java books, but I need this one.”

–James Gosling, fellow and vice president, Sun Microsystems, Inc.

“An excellent book, crammed with good advice on using the Java programming language and object-oriented programming in general.”

–Gilad Bracha, coauthor of The Java™ Language Specification, Third Edition

“10/10–anyone aspiring to write good Java code that others will appreciate reading and maintaining should be required to own a copy of this book. This is one of those rare books where the information won’t become obsolete with subsequent releases of the JDK library.”
–Peter Tran, bartender, JavaRanch.com

“The best Java book yet written.... Really great; very readable and eminently useful. I can’t say enough good things about this book. At JavaOne 2001, James Gosling said, ‘Go buy this book!’ I’m glad I did, and I couldn’t agree more.”
–Keith Edwards, senior member of research staff, Computer Science Lab at the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), and author of Core JINI (Prentice Hall, 2000)

“This is a truly excellent book done by the guy who designed several of the better recent Java platform APIs (including the Collections API).”
–James Clark, technical lead of the XML Working Group during the creation of the XML 1.0 Recommendation, editor of the XPath and XSLT Recommendations

“Great content. Analogous to Scott Meyers’ classic Effective C++. If you know the basics of Java, this has to be your next book.”
–Gary K. Evans, OO mentor and consultant, Evanetics, Inc

“Josh Bloch gives great insight into best practices that really can only be discovered after years of study and experience.”
–Mark Mascolino, software engineer

“This is a superb book. It clearly covers many of the language/platform subtleties and trickery you need to learn to become a real Java master.”
–Victor Wiewiorowski, vice president development and code quality manager, ValueCommerce Co., Tokyo, Japan

“I like books that under-promise in their titles and over-deliver in their contents. This book has 57 items of programming advice that are well chosen. Each item reveals a clear, deep grasp of the language. Each one illustrates in simple, practical terms the limits of programming on intuition alone, or taking the most direct path to a solution without fully understanding what the language offers.”

–Michael Ernest, Inkling Research, Inc.

“I don’t find many programming books that make me want to read every page–this is one of them.”
–Matt Tucker, chief technical officer, Jive Software

“Great how-to resource for the experienced developer.”
–John Zukowski, author of numerous Java technology books

“I picked this book up two weeks ago and can safely say I learned more about the Java language in three days of reading than I did in three months of study! An excellent book and a welcome addition to my Java library.”
–Jane Griscti, I/T advisory specialist

Are you looking for a deeper understanding of the Java™ programming language so that you can write code that is clearer, more correct, more robust, and more reusable? Look no further! Effective Java™, Second Edition, brings together seventy-eight indispensable programmer’s rules of thumb: working, best-practice solutions for the programming challenges you encounter every day.

This highly anticipated new edition of the classic, Jolt Award-winning work has been thoroughly updated to cover Java SE 5 and Java SE 6 features introduced since the first edition. Bloch explores new design patterns and language idioms, showing you how to make the most of features ranging from generics to enums, annotations to autoboxing.

Each chapter in the book consists of several “items” presented in the form of a short, standalone essay that provides specific advice, insight into Java platform subtleties, and outstanding code examples. The comprehensive descriptions and explanations for each item illuminate what to do, what not to do, and why.

Highlights include:

• New coverage of generics, enums, annotations, autoboxing, the for-each loop, varargs, concurrency utilities, and much more
• Updated techniques and best practices on classic topics, including objects, classes, libraries, methods, and serialization
• How to avoid the traps and pitfalls of commonly misunderstood subtleties of the language
• Focus on the language and its most fundamental libraries: java.lang, java.util, and, to a lesser extent, java.util.concurrent and java.io

Simply put, Effective Java™, Second Edition, presents the most practical, authoritative guidelines available for writing efficient, well-designed programs.

Average Customer Rating:

All Java programmers should read this book	Customer Rating:
This book is a must-read for all Java programmers. In fact, I think every programmer should read this book before they start programming Java. The book is full of good advice, best practices and guidelines. Highly recommended

Excellent book	Customer Rating:
Absolute classic, definitely my favorite Java book. Every professional Java developer should have it on her/his desk. It's not the easiest book and shouldn't be read if You are novice in Java, there better books to get started with Java, but for experienced developers, this book is invaluable.

The best general Java book I've read so far

Customer Rating:

This book seems to be one of the most critically acclaimed Java titles. What could I possibly add to what has been said? The acclaim is fully deserved. I had the feeling that I already learned something new and important as soon as I reached page twenty. This is something that I cannot say of very many books. Effective Java manages to be extremely useful and simultaneously extremely easy to read. However, "easy" doesn't mean simple in this case, since many of the discussed problems are subtly complex. Some are so complex, in fact, that Java beginners might not fully understand or appreciate them. So, it's probably not a book for beginners. On the other hand, the book is neither esoteric. The 78 items are general Java programming issues which one is likely to encounter in everyday work at some point, regardless of any specific domain. The book is written in a clear and concise language and each problem is exceptionally well reasoned. The author has a very deep understanding of the Java language, which is rather apparent and no surprise, since Joshua Bloch is one of the architects of the Java platform. Incidentally, this also means that the problems are discussed from the perspective of an API designer rather than from the perspective of an application programmer. This is useful, because it is primarily concerned with creating robust and high quality interfaces. Architects, designers, and application programmers benefit likewise from this. The items discussed in this book can probably be described as design and implementation level rationales. They are grouped by Java categories, such as generics, enums, annotations, exceptions, serialisation, as well as by more general concepts, such as object creation, classes and interfaces, methods and concurrency. Many of the individual topics are related; therefore the author makes ample use of cross references, which is helpful for reference use. The included code examples are a joy to read; they are clear, concise, and always illustrative. While discussing the intricacies of the above named topics, Joshua Bloch casually introduces the reader to a good number of commonly used design patterns, many of which are illustrated with code examples. However, design patterns are not themselves formally discussed. The book equips Java programmers with an arsenal of relevant best practices, from comparatively simple things such as creating objects, implementing "equals()" and "hashCode()" methods to more advanced topics, such as concurrency, mutability, and thread safety. In doing so, Joshua Bloch points out quite a few quirks and peculiarities of the Java language, and he does not only point them out, but explains their practical consequences in detail. Thus, the book has great didactic value, as the reader will end up with a higher level of familiarity with the language. Reading this book is time well invested for any Java programmer.

A 'must' for any serious computer programmer's library

Customer Rating:

The first edition of EFFECTIVE JAVA offers Java programmers a deeper understanding of Java's language than the casual beginner's book, offering tips on how to write code that is clearer, more correct, and more reusable. Over seventy programmer rules of thumb are contained in a new edition exploring design patterns, language idioms, and generics, along with updated techniques on common topics and avoiding common pitfalls of language. The second edition expands upon concepts so popular in the first and is a 'must' for any serious computer programmer's library. Diane C. Donovan California Bookwatch

Taught this old dog new tricks

Customer Rating:

I've been programming Java since 1995 and sometimes think I know everything I need to know about working with the language. Sometimes it takes a book like "Effective Java" make you realize there's always more to learn. This book is packed with incredibly useful information that every single Java developer should know. The best part is that Bloch is not proposing any kind of radical new programming method. He is simply organizing and presenting tried and true Java programming patterns and disciplines. I can't count how many times I've said, "Of course, it is so obvious! Why didn't I think of that?" when I was reading this book. The items presented are things you may know, or half-know, and all it takes is the proper presentation and explanation to completely "ice" things in your mind. The best part is starting a new project after reading "Effective Java" and getting to try out all the good stuff in your own code. I bought the First Edition seven years ago and am so happy the Second Edition is finally here. It is well worth the wait. If you develop in Java in any capacity -- get this book!