But... I just bought 2 books from your list.
I keep a track of cool design ideas here: http://sandrasf.com/kiss - so if anyone wants to append there they can.
(I like "SQL Tuning", "SQL for smartites" and Doug Lea's book on concurency.)
.V
Erik Weber wrote:
Joe Germuska wrote:
Also, while I see your point that the overall concept of DOM might be more sensible in theory than that of SAX, I found that it's just easier to get going with the SAX API than with DOM or even JDOM. You can get something working with very few lines of code, and good examples are all over the Web. SAX can be a pain to debug though.
Certainly not "more sensible" -- in fact, I've seen over and over again people who aren't comfortable with SAX implement things that involve reading enormous amounts of XML using DOM and then running out of memory. But they decompose the problem into "first, get everything in; then do something to everything" instead of "get one in, handle it, and discard it."
I was trying to agree with you. :) But yeah, you're right of course.
I read this awesome book called "Building Parsers in Java" a couple years ago
That sounds worth looking up...
These days, so many books are about how to use vendor products or APIs. "Mastering" this or that, "Up to Speed" with this or that, and the ever popular "Professional" this or that. I'm not knocking those -- I need those too of course. But I really appreciate getting my hands on those rare books that just focus on the fruits of someone's creativity and inventiveness. You may never need to create your own language or even build your own regular expression parser, but, do you enjoy the art of programming? Do you enjoy math and science? Do you like to learn about different ways to approach the same problem? Do you like to build a better mousetrap? Dragging and dropping beans and jar files is not my idea of a good time. Too bad all any client/tech shop seems to want is the same thing someone else already has done, with a new marketing twist. Once we have CRUD in a bottle for $19.95 and all the legacy stuff is snuffed out, what will programmers do for a living? Ah, I'm just complaining as usual.
Anyway, of the dozens of Java books I have discovered and/or bought in the last few years, a few stand out in the way I described:
* "Building Parsers With Java", by Steven John Metsker, Addison Wesley (0-201-71962-2) -- creative, well organized, well written, well edited, just a nice piece of work that definitely wasn't "cranked out". A fun book about creating and interpreting your own languages.
* "Digital Audio with Java", by Craig A. Lindley, Prentice Hall (0-13-087676-3) -- ever wanted to know how to build a parametric EQ in Java, from the knobs and LEDs all the way to the wave shaping?
* "Java Design", by Peter Coad (TogetherSoft) and Mark Mayfield, Prentice Hall (0-13-9111181-6) -- offers a perspective on design that you probably won't find anywhere else (with chaper titles such as "Design with Threads" and "Design with Notification", and hand-drawn diagrams); forget that IDE and get out your pad and pencil.
Perhaps funny that I should say this, being a lover of lowest-level programming, but I have found that the books that have helped me the most as a programmer (in the long run) are ones about design patterns, idioms and algorithms (all high-level things in some fashion), rather than those about the latest API or product. Unfortunately I cannot back up that statement with $$$ earned -- at least not yet. The GoF book was published how long ago? How many tech books of today are of equal value? I guess it depends on your perspective.
Speaking of perspective, ever read "The Timeless Way of Building"? How about (waaaaaaaayyyyyy OT) "The Fourth Dimension"?
Man, I need a life. :)
Cheers, Erik
But I appreciate your elaborating on commons digester. That's the one I was thinking of. I'll have to check that out. Also, I've never even looked at Spring. By the way, do you happen to know what type of parser either of those uses? Just curious.
Digester is a wrapper around SAX. Digester itself extends org.xml.sax.helpers.DefaultHandler And while the most common way people use Digester is to create a tree of objects, once you get inside it, you realize that you can do a lot more. You can write Digester rules that do the aforementioned "get one, handle it and discard it" as well as the more common rules which do "get one and add it to the tree".
Joe
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