Title: Kick Ass Java Programming (Advanced

everything- with an attitude!)

Author: Tonny Espeset
ISBN: 1-883577-99-3
Cost: £29-50
Disk: CD enclosed

 

I was intrigued by this book. It claims “In this book, you’ll find the most advanced Java techniques ever collected in a single book-explained by Java guru (and programming “bad boy”) Tonney Espeset”. Now That is quite a bold statement. The part that worries me is the “bad boy” reference. Part of my work is getting rid of code generated by “bad boys” or cowboys as we call them....

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I flicked through the book and realised that, despite the accompanying CD containing all the source , about half the book is printed source code. Now code fragments to illustrate a point is one thing. This is just 200 pages of padding. The problem is it is not a book to dip into to read as the sections of text are broken up by the long chunks of code.

 

Despite the claims the content itself is not that revolutionary. It mainly concentrates of doing manipulation of graphics to make your web site look good including some VMRL and 3D. The source for these manipulations and filters are provided. The techniques are not that advanced (they do look good though). There is not, to my mind, enough back ground theory to enable the reader to do much more than run the code and tinker. For serious work one will need a better graphics book.

 

Whilst it is aimed squarely at the PC web market there is little help on web site design at all. Incidentally the CD contains, surprisingly, very few of usual raft of PD and shareware Java programs other books throw in. It does contain JDK and a couple of games.

 

This is is a niche book, Java (on a PC) for web graphics. There are far better books on graphics though they tend to be in C/C++, better books on web design and certainly better Java books. I would not buy this one.