Bibliography and resources for 04:547:202 (2)

Printed resources

Required textbooks

• Ivor Horton: Beginning Java 2 SDK 1.4 Edition, Wrox Press, 2002. Code, errata and support available online.

  We will use the first few chapters to review elementary Java; then we'll follow more or less the structure of the book through more advanced Java topics.
  (In order to save you time and effort, I've downloaded the code from the book and have installed it here. After each homework is due, I will also upload solutions to exercises.)

Recommended textbooks

• K. N. King: Java Programming: From the Beginning, W.W. Norton & Company, 2000.
• Harvey M. Deitel, Paul J. Deitel: Java How to Program (4th Edition), Prentice Hall, 2001.

  The two books above were considered as alternative textbooks for the course, but Horton's was deemed more appropriate. If you happen to get hold of them, they can offer alternative explanations and examples, from other authors.

• Cay Horstmann, Gary Cornell: Core Java 2, Vol. I: Fundamentals, Vol. II: Advanced Features, 2003 and 2001.

  These are among my favourites, with clear explanations and examples on a range of Java topics. Maybe a bit concise for a beginner.

• Marc Loy, Robert Eckstein, David Wood, James Elliott, Brian Cole: Java Swing, 2nd Edition, O'Reilly, 2002.

  Swing is a powerful toolkit for building advanced user interfaces. If you plan to buld user interfaces in the future, and can afford it, this Swing book would be very useful on your shelf.

• Tim Boudreau, Jesse Glick, Simeon Greene, Vaughn Spurlin, Jack J. Woehr: NetBeans: The Definitive Guide, O'Reilly, 2002.

  This can help you use the Integrated Development Environment used in class, NetBeans or Forte.

Other resources

• Sun's Java 1.4.0 documentation

• Sun's Java tutorial

• Violet, a simple and intuitive tool for UML design, authored by Cay Horstmann (also author of "Core Java"). Here's the free software: violet.jar. After you download it, you can run it by double-clicking it (in a Windows environments) or by typing "java -jar violet.jar" (at the DOS or Unix prompt). Alternatively, in a Windows environment you can run it directly by clicking the hyperlink to the file (although that means you download the file every time you run it).

Note on Forte, the Java compiler and Java SDK 1.4:

If you use Java constructs introduced in version 1.4 of the SDK, you need to specify that by a parameter for the compiler:

java -source 1.4 SomeProgram.java

If you use Forte to compile, use the menu Tools > Options > Building > External compilation and select "Enable JDK 1.4 source".