Excerpt
Preface This book is a collection of practical suggestions, advice, examples, and discussion about programming in the Java language. It is organized into individual lessons, each called a Praxis (pronounced prak-sis) and each discussing a particular topic. Each Praxis is written so that it stands on its own. You can read the book from front to back or select topics individually. This arrangement allows you to read the book in short intervals. Many Praxes (pronounced prak-sees) are fewer than five pages, thereby allowing you to study them in a brief amount of time.
In the book, I examine in detail particular design and programming issues. I chose the topics based on their relevancy to effective and efficient programming practices. One of the biggest complaints about Java is performance, so I devote the largest section of the book to this topic, exploring techniques to make Java code execute more efficiently.
I wrote this book as a guide to help you design and write code. It helps you understand Java more completely and enables you to write more-efficient, more-robust, and perhaps most important, more-correct code.
All of the information in this book applies to your Java programming. It is not particular to server, client, or GUI (graphical user interface) programming. In addition, you can apply this information to all versions and releases of Java.
The book's style was influenced by Scott Meyers' Effective C++ and More Effective C++ books. Because I found his style so useful as a way to organize a book, I decided to adopt a similar format.