The Elements of Java Style
On July - 24 - 20105 COMMENTS
Product Description
The Elements of Java Style, written by renowned author Scott Ambler, Alan Vermeulen, and a team of programmers from Rogue Wave Software, is directed at anyone who writes Java code. Many books explain the syntax and basic use of Java; however, this essential guide explains not only what you can do with the syntax, but what you ought to do. Just as Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style provides rules of usage for the English language, this text furnishes a set of r… More >>
it’s only recommended for the most begginer of the begginers, in general programing not only in java.
Very bad for me and, i think, everybody that has already written and seen any code in any language.
Wasted money.
example:
this is not right
if (something) {
do one thing
do another thing
}
this is right
if (something) {
….do one thing
….do another thing
….}
i guess, everybody knows this.
Rating: 1 / 5
Two things immediately irk me in this book.
First is the sloppy K&R style that I really find irritating to debug:
public class MyClass { … }
The curly brackets belong inline so you know where the SCOPE of the code begins and ends like this:
public class MyClass { … }
This is much more readable and easier to figure out which brackets go with which statement, especially when you have multi-nested statements! Think of it this way if you write a pascal program you don’t write it like this
procedure MouseUp(integer Xpos, integer Ypos) begin … end;
The debate over using Tab or spaces is less irritable except when I have to modify a nested class and have to spend alot of time counting spaces when a couple tabs would have cost less time. Also when you use tabs, the block structure really stands out well. The block structure is the whole reason for using the basic C syntax, so if you bland the block by only having two space tabs and hiding the begining curly bracket, the block does not stand out. you can’t see the forest for the trees.
The other complaint is the lack of Hungarian or an mention of it. Knowing the type by having it in the name of the method, var and class can save hours of time looking for the definition as well as save time naming them. iZipCode tells me right away that the zip is stored as an int and not a string.
Rating: 3 / 5
Read Code Complete by Steve McConnell. You don’t need this book. It contradicts itself on several occasions and is totally wrong on others. It’s unfortunate and sad how many organizations want to adopt texts like this as their “coding standard”. A pamplet-sized book of bullet-points can’t make developers competent, but a comprehensive manual of the best in software engineering practices like Code Complete can.
Rating: 1 / 5
I found the book to be very expensive for the number of pages and content that it delivers. I found the Essential Java Style book much better value and filled with more common sense pointers.
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Rating: 2 / 5
This book is really a set of rules for coding style. It is good for that, and has common sense rules. However for such a SMALL book, you pay a lot. The content fits in 118 pages that might be found on the web in various forms. So the value of the price is of question to me.
The benefit of purchasing the book is that it makes it handy to look up a style format if you have questions. That is usually the only time I reach for this book – most of it I have been doing for a while.
If you are trying to set a standard in your company/group/etc, and want people to have this, it would be a good one to fill the need. (It is suprising to find out how many people do not know these rules of style).
I think that this book could have been published and sold for five dollars (US) – then I would have given it 5 stars. Its price is my only issue – not its content.
Rating: 3 / 5