To the Authors.

[Mcgill Smith]

Hi and welcome

What sort of exposure to Java is needed to take full advantage of your book? Who are the target audience?

Thanks in advance.

[Alexandru Popescu]

Afaik Manning books are assuming nothing about the reader, and so takes him through all the steps from the beginner to a medium-advanced level.

--
./pope
[the_mindstorm]

[Ko Ko Naing]

Originally posted by Ali Pope:
Afaik Manning books are assuming nothing about the reader, and so takes him through all the steps from the beginner to a medium-advanced level.

Ali,
But I don't think Java Reflection in Action is not for beginners in Java... Mcgill question is reasonable, I feel... We need to know what sort of exposure to Java is needed to read the reflection book like this... At least of course, the readers must be familiar with Java... But what else? The authors are the ones who can definitely reply to Mcgill's questions in this case, I guess...

[Alexandru Popescu]

Sorry if you consider that was a wrong answer, but I was just telling my experience with the Manning books . That's all.

--
./pope
[the_mindstorm]

[friso dejonge]

This is definitively not a topic for beginners. (for once I agree with Naing) Also it is a topic which deserves more attention than it is currently getting in the coding world.

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

Mcgill,
Based on chapter one (downloadable from the manning site), the book assumes a working knowledge of basic java. It assumes you know about inheritance, interfaces, exceptions, private/public, ...

Ali,
I've found that the Mannings books don't assume you know anything about the topic (in this case reflection), but they do assume you know about other things. For example, the JUnit in Action book also assumes a working knowledge of basic java. Which makes sense because these aren't intro to java books.

[Alexandru Popescu]

Hi Jeanne!

It is the english negation that brought me down . I wanted to express the fact that Manning's books are step by step introductions to the topic. If, for introducing the topic, you must know other things this is kindda normal. (I cannot imagine a book introducing container managed persistence and not requiring to know about j2ee and ejb ).

cheers
--
./pope
[the_mindstorm]

[Nate Forman]

Hey McGill,

We targetted Java Reflection in Action to intermediate Java programmers. Jeanne's paraphrase of chapter 1 is a good summary. To get the most out of the book, you need a good working knowledge of the Java language and familiar API's and an understanding of object-oriented concepts. The Manning folks made sure that we kept everything as accessible as possible, and that turned out nicely, but it would be very difficult to write an intro level book on something like reflection...

Hope that helps,

Nate

[Mcgill Smith]

Thanks Nate.

[Kishore Dandu]

Originally posted by Nate Forman:
Hey McGill,

We targetted Java Reflection in Action to intermediate Java programmers. Jeanne's paraphrase of chapter 1 is a good summary. To get the most out of the book, you need a good working knowledge of the Java language and familiar API's and an understanding of object-oriented concepts. The Manning folks made sure that we kept everything as accessible as possible, and that turned out nicely, but it would be very difficult to write an intro level book on something like reflection...

Hope that helps,

Nate

Can you elaborate on instances where Reflection can be a hindarance for overall system(cases where it is used un-necessarily)

[Ko Ko Naing]

Originally posted by Kishore Dandu:


Can you elaborate on instances where Reflection can be a hindarance for overall system(cases where it is used un-necessarily)

Usage of reflection thread might contain info that you are finding for... The thread is pretty long and many reflection experts are invloved in the long discussion there...

Hope this helps...

[Nate Forman]

Hi Kishore,

I agree with Ko Ko that the usage thread will be help answer your question. Also, there's a thread that started on object creation that turned into a performance discussion. That's a good one for you to read. We tried to address as many of these issues in the book as we could...

Nate