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| Book: | Better, Faster, Lighter Java | |
| Subject: | An important book | |
| Date: | 2004-10-05 12:58:42 | |
| From: | Anonymous Reader | |
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Rating:
One may love 'Better, Faster, Lighter Java' or may hate it -- but it's a book that is difficult to ignore. Because, the authors had the courage to state their viewpoint against the growing trend of spiraling complexity of J2EE development. Because their book steps back from being a conventional tome on cranks-shafts-gears of a big J2EE engine and asks the important question of how to maintain the core design principle of KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) in the face of ever-growing complexity of frameworks. They rightly identify that bloat -- the growth of complexity of any successful infrastructure -- is inevitable. Any intermediate to advanced Java developer who had been confronted by emergence of mega-frameworks that promise to solve the problem but become a problem by their own volition will find this book useful to fight the bloat. The authors presented their strategy to fight the bloat with suggestions, practical advises and associated tools such as JUnit, Ant, Hibernate, Kodo or Spring. This book is not a reference to these agile technologies but provides enough information on their design principles to justify how they can become the foundations to build reliable, extensible enterprise systems. The suggestions such as 'Do one thing, and Do it Well', 'Strive for Transparency', 'Allow for Extension' are direct, full of experienced insight and supported by definite examples and best practices. The beginning sentence of the book simply states: Java development is in crisis. Now that is a strong assertion. The J2EE evangelists and architects and big application server vendors will surely disagree. But the book is full of such opinions. One may agree or disagree with these assertions but their directness will make one think. That, in my opinion, is an important purpose of any book. In that sense, it is an important book for those who like to think what they are doing. |
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