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Apache Jakarta Commons
What's To Like
The book takes the reader on a journey through the Jakarta Commons. The Commons is like a massive utility library of Java code. Much of the code has been promoted out of the other Jakarta projects as it became more useful. One of the first such components was the Digester, which is a component to initialise a Java object from the contents of an XML configuration file. Very useful, originally from Struts and now used extensively by other Jakarta projects.
As the subject matter for a book, the Commons seems like a natural winner (I guess I have to say that!). There are so many components in the Commons that a guide to their types and usage does need to be available for developers.
Naturally, the book has a website to accompany it.
What's To ConsiderWhere to begin? I was actually surprised to find that I did not care for this book. The last review I wrote was for Mr. Iverson's very good Hibernate book. That was well written and structured. Unfortunately, this book feels kind of thrown together. The lack of care shows in the cramped layout and typesetting, the over-abundance of UML diagrams (a few here and there are great, but this felt like padding), code examples that can only be described as under-whelming and an approach that feels like an annotated telephone directory.
Despite the lack of quality of the primary chapters, they only actually account for the first 199 pages of the book. This is actually a very reasonable number of pages for a book, especially when you consider that classics like the first edition of Kernighan and Ritchie's "The C Programming Language" weighed in at about 220 pages. Sadly, the book then goes on for another 125 pages churning out what looks like repackaged JavaDoc for each of the major classes in the commons. You may like this, but it annoys the beans out of me and it'll reduce the score on one of my reviews faster than the Linux community can debunk a SCO IP infringement claim.
SummaryI really wanted to like this book. But it feels like someone was cranking the handle on a cash machine and thought that if they printed stuff about Jakarta, that the geeks would obediently buy it. Not this time. There are other books about the Jakarta Commons; buy one of those."
You could purchase Apache Jakarta Commons - Reusable Java Components from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
If you go through the Barnes & Noble link for the book, you'll find that the book costs $31.99 for the unwashed masses, and $28.79 for the "B&N members". What Barnes and Noble isn't telling their members is that they are still paying more than if they went to Amazon! Even with an associate laden link, you can still get the book off of Amazon for a mere $26.39! And no membership hassles to mess with!
From an Amazon review:
Note that this 325-page book is really a 201-page book. Appendix A is the entire API of the Commons lang project - word for word.
Am I the only one who gets annoyed at how computer books have devolved into hardcopies of auto-generated online documentation? Am I the only one who remembers books that cover the intangables of coding (e.g. theory of operation, correct methodology for usage, cool coding and hardware tricks, etc.) rather than the "instruction manual for dummies" books? Bah, I say! I don't know which is scarier: the current trend in books, or the fact that the review I'm citing gave the book 4 out of 5 stars.
Of course, I'll probably get in trouble with my fellow authors for saying this. (Sorry guys, but I just don't like 90% of the books being printed.)
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Next time, spend less effort writing about your own involvement and more time on that of the authors of the book.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
Even with an associate laden link, you can still get the book off of Amazon for a mere $26.39! And no membership hassles to mess with!
Or you can use the non-associate link to prevent datadino's flagrant commission-whoring.
Amazingly, this bit of self-promotion is actually more useful than the review. Tim O'Brien's book is my favorite on this subject and it's far, far better than the Will Iverson title. I particularly like how well it covers some of the extremely useful but not well documented APIs like the HttpClient, there are far more readable, usable examples that cover the kind of real-world issues you run into the minute you try to use that API than any other source I know of.
Larne Pekowsky: "Apache Jakarta and Beyond: A Java Programmer's Introduction" is also a decent title in this area, albeit a bit too broad to really do that good of a job on any topic. Even a 600 page book can't cover things like Eclipse or Ant in a chapter.
I have all three books on my Safari bookshelf right now; only O'Brien's is staying once I can remove the other two. The Iverson and Pekowsky titles have some interesting sections worth looking at once, while "Jakarta Commons Cookbook" I always want to keep around for reference, in the same fashion I already rely on the similarly useful "Java Cookbook".
I would just like to respond to the bit about "cash cow":
;)
1. The book itself is published under an open license - the material in the book will be available as a free electronic download in a few months.
2. Yes, the last 125 pages *is* (for all intents and purposes) the printed javadoc. This was included at the request of the publisher, and it is valuable for some people.
So... I don't know how negatively the review was influenced by the inclusion of the Apache material, but it is entirely above-board per the Apache license and essentially reciprocal - I'm giving the material in the book back to the community via a free license to download the material.
Oh, and as an FYI, book writing is hardly a cash cow - I only wish.
If folks have any questions (e.g. why the delay in making the electronic version available? What is the state of affairs for tech book publishing? Why aren't you rich writing books yet?) let me know...
Cheers & best wishes,
-Will Iverson
I would recommend everyone to O'Brien's Commons Cookbook. It is concise and to the point, (as a good cookbook title should be), with lots of good summaries and examples.
He gives just enough attention to a topic to give the intelligent reader the gist, as well as a jumping-off point for further investigation into the specific commons sub-project.
I was familiar with and actively used several commons components before, but this book introduced me to many I was not even aware of (or was aware of but didn't completely understand what it would be useful for). Also gave me ideas for how to easily integrate new commons packages into new projects under design for a tighter and more efficient architecture.
Go get it now...