Direct from the creators of the Java™ programming language, the completely revised fourth edition of The Java™ Programming Language is an indispensable resource for novice and advanced programmers alike.

Developers around the world have used previous editions to quickly gain a deep understanding of the Java programming language, its design goals, and how to use it most effectively in real-world development. Now, Ken Arnold, James Gosling, and David Holmes have updated this classic to reflect the major enhancements in Java™ 2 Standard Edition 5.0 (J2SE™ 5.0).

The authors systematically cover most classes in Java’s main packages, java.lang.*, java.util, and java.io, presenting in-depth explanations of why these classes work as they do, with informative examples. Several new chapters and major sections have been added, and every chapter has been updated to reflect today’s best practices for building robust, efficient, and maintainable Java software.

Key changes in this edition include

• New chapters on generics, enums, and annotations, the most powerful new language features introduced in J2SE 5.0

• Changes to classes and methods throughout to reflect the addition of generics

• Major new sections on assertions and regular expressions

• Coverage of all the new language features, from autoboxing and variable argument methods to the enhanced for-loop and covariant return types

• Coverage of key new classes, such as Formatter and Scanner

The Java™ Programming Language, Fourth Edition, is the definitive tutorial introduction to the Java language and essential libraries and an indispensable reference for all programmers, including those with extensive experience. It brings together insights you can only get from the creators of Java: insights that will help you write software of exceptional quality.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 70 Ratings

What a book! - 2006-11-04
Reviewer Rating:
I thought I have fine Java knowledge, actually I already knew most stuff in this book exception some new things from Java 5. But the way these authors present Java language in such a simple, clean way make me felt I was overconfident about my Java knowledge. I believe this book benefits more for experienced Java programmer than newbie. It's terrific for beginners too, save you lots of fluff.

mediocre, too verbose - 2006-12-09
Reviewer Rating:
every programming language supposedly has two books: one tutorial, and the other a reference manual. the tutorial's strength lies in illuminating examples and progressive organization of the materials, while the reference book should shine with conciseness and rigorousness.

this book organizes the topics in a weird way, and the examples lack insights. one can judge this by looking at the "exception" chapter: verbose and not to the point.

JLS Simplified - 2009-04-02
Reviewer Rating:
This book is basically the Java Language Specification (JLS) but simplified, focused and made relevant to real-world programming. If you program in Java and you haven't at least scanned through this book, you are almost certainly missing a few insights that could make your Java knowledge more precise and complete.

This book doesn't just cover the language, but also some important libraries, with lots of good sample code and therefore makes a great desktop reference. The sample code is simple, as it should be because when you are scanning for an answer, you don't want a fully-fledged application example, but a snippet showing the usage idiom. However, this is not Java in a "nutshell", nor is it a pocket reference. Its a tome that you will come back to for many years unless Java changes significantly, like it did from 1.4 to 1.5.

If you are just starting out with Java, this book is overkill. It takes quite a bit of patience and maturity with programming before one can handle a book of such detail. However, if you've been playing around with Java for more than an year and want to work towards becoming an expert, this is an indispensable resource.

If you're comfortable with programming .. - 2007-11-17
Reviewer Rating:
and would like to learn Java, then this is the book for you. It provides a very good discussion on all important topics in Core Java at a level that would suit a person who understands the basics of object oriented programming and wants to learn Java. There is a nice discussion on threading and even the Reflection API which is not usually covered in introductory texts in Java finds a place here...furthermore it is written by the founder of Java and it shows..the text is lucid without running the risk of being terse, and there are enough examples to illustrate the key points. Overall I would highly recommend this book to any programmer wishing to learn Java.

I am very satisfied with this book - 2008-08-03
Reviewer Rating:
I am very satisfied with this Java(TM) Programming Language, The (4th Edition) (The Java Series) book because it includes all necesary information to learn about the language and make exercises, It is great for me and I recomend it very much.

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