Old books on Java, still good?

[Marcelo (3)]

Hi all,
I have a couple of old books from 2000 and 2001 regarding java development, jdbc and jsp. Starting from scratch, can I still use them to learn Java, (while I use Java 5 on my pc) without experiencing significant obstacles? Did everything changed in 5 years, and those books are obsolete and next to useless?

Thanks.

Hi,

For basic programming, I am still using the ones that I have bought on 2001 (simple AWT-later-Swing applications, trees, Network and some threads). They are not so obsolate. However, the best library is the web and the sun tutorials. If you check a little bit in the sun tutorials you will realise that the explanations are very similar (if not equal) to the official books (the case for JNI, Threads, Swing, etc).

bye,

MArcelo

PS: There are some free e-books on the web for java programming

 

[Tony (25)]

Hi all,
I have a couple of old books from 2000 and 2001 regarding java development, jdbc and jsp. Starting from scratch, can I still use them to learn Java, (while I use Java 5 on my pc) without experiencing significant obstacles? Did everything changed in 5 years, and those books are obsolete and next to useless?

Thanks.

 

[PH]

If you give us their titles, ISBNs, perhaps we can say some more about it.

Paul

 

[Chris Uppal]

If you give us their titles, ISBNs, perhaps we can say some more about it.

Ttile and author would be more help -- we don't want to /buy/ the books ;-)

-- chris

 

[Scott Smith]

I still use my old reference material from 2000/2001 because I know where everything is. If you are serious about learning Java, it wouldn't hurt to invest in more modern literature. O'Reilly books are great for reference and learning. For advanced more specific topics, O'Reilly's stack is lacking on some topics, so I turn to Manning Publications. Good luck. Java is a great language/platform for modern development. I make a good living doing it.

 

[Roedy Green]

I have a couple of old books from 2000 and 2001 regarding java development, jdbc and jsp. Starting from scratch, can I still use them to learn Java, (while I use Java 5 on my pc) without experiencing significant obstacles? Did everything changed in 5 years, and those books are obsolete and next to useless?

see the list at http://mindprod.com/javareleasedates.html to see when various Java releases were done.

1.1 added a totally new event model, using Listeners. This is the level Microsoft has trapped many of its customers at. 1996-01
1.2 added ArrayList and other Collections. 1998-12-04
1.3 added Swing. 2000-05-08
1.4 added regexes, assertions and nio. 2002-02-13
1.5 added generics, enumerations and annotations. 2004-09-29

From that you can guess what HAS to be missing and what might be missing.

Seems odd that JDK 1.5 has been out for over a year and people still think of it as "new" and scary, even though it has had 6 revisions.

 

[IchBin]

see the list at http://mindprod.com/javareleasedates.html to see when various Java releases were done.

http://mindprod.com/jgloss/javareleasedates.html

 

[Daniel Dyer]

1.2 added ArrayList and other Collections. 1998-12-04
1.3 added Swing. 2000-05-08

Swing was included in 1.2 and was available separately before that.

Dan.

 

[Roedy Green]

Swing was included in 1.2 and was available separately before that.

what was the big news for 1.3?

 

[Roedy Green]

what was the big news for 1.3?

java.util.Timer, java.lang. StrictMath, Runtime.addShutdownHook, java.awt.Robot, java.awt.print. PageAttributes, java.media.sound.

 

[Luc The Perverse]

what was the big news for 1.3?

From Wikipedia (main ones - also has comprehensive list)

HotSpot JVM introduced
RMI was changed to be based on CORBA

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_programming_language

 

[Scott Smith]

Ttile and author would be more help -- we don't want to /buy/ the books ;-)

-- chris

O'Rielly:
Java in a Nutshell
Java Examples in a Nutshell
Tomcat the Definitive Guide
Head First Design Patterns
Head First Servlets and JSPs

Manning:
Spring in Action
Hibernate in Action

These are the ones I seem to hang out in the most. Some are old, some are new. All are available now in new editions.

 

[Daniel Dyer]

what was the big news for 1.3?

Dynamic proxies, the strictfp keyword, JNDI and Java Sound added to the core distribution, CORBA ORB added plus support for RMI over IIOP.

Dan.

 

[Daniel Dyer]

From Wikipedia (main ones - also has comprehensive list)

HotSpot JVM introduced
RMI was changed to be based on CORBA

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_programming_language

Wikipedia is wrong (no great surprise there). RMI was not changed to be based on CORBA, the option to run RMI over IIOP was added for those who wish to combine the disadvantages of RMI with the disadvantages of CORBA. However, it could/can still be used in its Java-only mode.

Dan.

 

[Monique Y. Mudama]

Swing was included in 1.2 and was available separately before that.

FWIW, I remember it this way as well. I don't remember 1.3 having any big changes for what I was doing at the time.

 

[AbsX]

I got a few old massive thick tomb Java books by Horton. They are still very good and cogent.