Reviews for Java Generics and Collections

1. Half good..

   Rated 3 out of 5 stars, December 12th, 2009

   I really did not get on with the Generics part of this book. I thought the author's style was very poorly suited to an advanced and often confusing subject like Generics. The more I read, the more confused I got. I thought "hang on the opposite should be happening" so I eventually canned it and just used the free Java Tutorial, which did a far better job of explaining it to me.
   
   I particularly didn't like the way the author would give an example piece of code, discuss it, expand to discuss something else, talk for a few pages, then come back to talking about the example again just on the fly. I'd think "eh? what is he talking about?" then have to flick back a few pages to try and work it out. My main criticism would be that that guy is a braniac who seems to have a deep understanding of the subject but is not that good at progressively teaching others. I'm no Generics expert but I think I could write a better beginner's guide.
   
   The reason this gets 3 stars is that the other half of the book is quite useful. Presumably this is written by the other author. Well anyway it provides a nifty overview and explanation of every main class in the Collections framework and makes a good reference or introduction to this.

2. The best book on collections I ever read

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, December 12st, 2008

   This book is about generics and collections. I must say I had difficulties in understanding all topics in the generics part (although I made mine some important concepts such as the get/put principle). But where this book really bought me in is in the collections part. The book explains with a scientific approach Java Collections, from Sets to Lists to Maps. For each, it explains the interfaces, the various implementations, the data-structures backing the various implementations, the threading support, the performance using the big-o notation. By the end of the collections part, the reader will certainly have a thourough undertanding of the various types of collection implementations, when to use them and how to put them to best use applying tradeoffs between performance, thread-safety and business requirements.

3. A terrific reference

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, November 12th, 2007

   I reckon this is a great book. Generics is a difficult subject for us poor procedural programmers, and this book lays it out in a well-structured, concise but not overly dry form.
   
   I don't like loads of wordy so-called 'real-world' examples to pad out pages. This book gets the balance exactly right.

4. Buy the book to gain a better understanding into a subtly complex subject

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, April 12nd, 2007

   I bought this book to get a deeper understanding into how generics are implemented in Java. Beyond the basics, generics are a difficult subject to understand. The book does a good job in highlighting how Sun implemented generics in Java and the reasons for the choices that they made. The book and the subject does require existing Java programming knowledge and so cannot be considered as an introduction text. The examples although brief are to the point; I would have preferred more real life examples to be included. Apart from Angelika Langer's site on Java generics, this book is the best reference on Java generics that you will currently find.