Effective Java

In 2005, in my everlasting pursuit for slick coding challenges, I took some time off college to work at Avid Technology Inc. as software developer. I applied for a six month internship position in the cross-platform team (developing in Java and C++) and ended up staying with them for two years :).

The work was highly interesting as was the team, which was made up of former NXN Software developers, mothers and fathers to the brainchild of company founder Gregor vom Scheidt: the Alienbrain SCM and Media Asset Management System.

Thanks to the people I met at the Munich development office, where I have to single out my friends Thomas Krammer and Austin Moore in particular, I could gather extensive experience with agile methodologies and a whole slew of better coding practices. During that time I extended my personal library of required and essential reading by a whole bunch of books, all very interesting and insightful. One of the books finding its way into my mahogany paneled, wing chair equipped reading room and claiming an extra-special spot, is Joshua Bloch's Effective Java Programming Language Guide.

The book is an excellent compilation of subtleties of the java language and class library, best coding practices and insights from the author's extensive wealth of experience with all things java (among other things being the head behind the Java Collections API). The book draws upon the style of Scott Meyers Effective C++ series, presenting its material in a strictly itemized manner, making it suitable for quick reading bursts and usage as reference literature.

Effective Java having been published in 2001 does not feature any discussion on the new language features introduced with Java 5, which in my view does not diminish any of its value to java geeks though.

I suggest you don't wait any longer to get your hands on this wonderful read. In case you'd like to dwell in the land of the unknowing for a little longer, you could also pre-order and wait for the next edition of the book, Effective Java(TM) Programming Language Guide (2nd Edition) (The Java Series), which is supposed to respect the latest updates to the language.

Being a Google Tech Talks addict, I treat you to an insightful and interesting talk given by Josh Bloch on Good API Design.

P.S.: The part with the mahogany paneled and wing chair equipped personal library is not entirely true .... but can you blame me for wishful thinking :)