A warm welcome to Ivor

[Dave Vick]

Cindy and I, along with the rest of the bartenders and sherrifs here at the ranch would like to extend a warm welcome to Ivor Horton.
Ivor will be here this week promoting his book and answering your questions.
Welcome Ivor and thanks
Dave

[Hema Menon]

Glad to have Ivor Horton here. Well, one of my first Java Books I ever bought was "Beginning Java", so how could I ever not acknowledge. Looking forward to Beginning Java 2 SDK 1.4 book.

Thanks,
Hema

[Ivor Horton]

Thanks Dave. I'm glad to be here.
Ivor

[Bear Bibeault]

Beginning Java was also my first Java book. I learned a lot from it. (Thanks, Ivor.)
I haven't seen any of the newer editions, but if they are like the original I would recommend Ivor's book to anyone wanting to learn Java. I found the book very approachable, informative and well-organized.
hth,
bear

[Cindy Glass]

Hi Ivor . Is that REALLY your picture on the book - or did you hire a model???

[Alagan Devika]

Hi Ivor,
Welcome to the Forum.
Beginning Java 2 talks about fundamentals and other topics well.
But if there is more info about Threads that will be nice.
Shanthi

[Cindy Glass]

shanti,
Please change your name to be compliant with JavaRanch's naming policy.
Your displayed name should be 2 separate names with more than 1 letter each. We really want this to be a professional forum and would prefer that you use your REAL name.
Thanks,
Cindy
PS: only folks with display names that meet the policy will be considered for the giveaway.

[Ivor Horton]

Hi Cindy,
It is really me I'm afraid. It must be an approximate likeness as some folks recognized me at JavaOne when I was last there

[Ivor Horton]

Shanti,
I have not added any more on threads for a couple of reasons. One is space. There a practical limit of around 1200 pages just so you can carry the thing and it doesn't fall apart. The book aims to teach everything you need to be able to write a Java application (or applet) but the 'basics' required for this is quite a large and growing set. After chopping several chapters out of the 1.3 edition the 1.4 edition is still 1153 pages with the new stuff.
The second is complexity. Thread programming can get very difficult - even for experts. You need to know about threads to get into serious Java programming but an in-depth discussion needs a whole book. I tried to include just enough without confusing people - I hope I succeeded

[Miguel Imoooo]

Hey Ivor, I used your Beginning Visual C++ 6 book for me to get started on my programming career. I had great fun with that book. =)
Now, Im transitioning to java right now.
good luck!!

[Ivor Horton]

Hi Miguel,
I'm delighted that the C++ book worked for you. That book goes back a while now but still going strong. Java is a whole lot easier than C++ you'll be glad to hear.

[Thomas Paul]

Ivor, a lot of books have a brief "about the author" section but your doesn't. Is there some mystery you are hiding? Are you in the witness protection program? How about a brief "about Ivor"?

[Ivor Horton]

Hi Thomas,
Apart from being in the witness protection program I've been around the industry for longer than I care to admit (I have programmed a machine with valves ). I spent a lot of time teaching engineers and scientists how to write their own code - mainly in Fortran but some of the more adventurous souls in a fantastic language for impressing the uninitiated called APL.
I also have written code of my own in various languages from assembler on up and for various kinds of systems and applications - mainly engineering and industrial stuff but some online closed-loop control systems.
Like most people I eventually progressed beyond what I was good at, and managed other people doing the interesting work. I was involved in various largish industrial projects including one located in a country that no longer exists (just this side of the Ural mountains) that is indelibly imprinted on my memory for a variety of reasons.
I was also involved for a period of several years in the development and application of CAD/CAM systems - primarily mechanical in the automotive and aerospace context, but also in architecture and electronics.
These days I do a little light programming and writing and occasionally critique other folks' efforts in this context.

[Thomas Paul]

APL! When I was in college working on my CS degree, APL was a required course. A very interesting language.

[Gerry Giese]

Ivor,
Does the NIO coverage include discussions of how to do proper usage of regular IO and NIO in a multo-threaded application? I'm about to work on a graphics application that reads lots of data from various files that I plan to multithread, as well as I do a lot of servlet work.
Thanks!

[Michael Morris]

Ivor,
Haven't used Fortran since the 70's when we used punch cards. Ever drop your stack er program carrying it to the card reader? Since we didn't have easy access to a sorter, one of my first Assembly programs was to use the card reader as a sorter. It's always nice to see someone around here who remembers when RAM was CORE.
Michael Morris

[Ivor Horton]

Gerry,
No, it doesn't specifically deal with I/O in a multi-threading environment. It covers the essential of using direct and indirect buffers of various kinds plus using channels to do simple file read/writes, scatter/gather operations with files across multiple buffers and memory-mapped file operations.
You should not have too many problems with multi-threading using new I/O on files as operations using a FileChannel object are safe for use by multiple concurrent threads.
In the 1.4 edition I now do not discuss file I/O using the old stream class operations as these are an alternative to the FileChannel operations are eventually likely to be obsoleted by new I/O.
There is also quite a lot more to new I/O than I was able to include. It also applies to sockets and provides for pipes.

[Ivor Horton]

Michael,
Yes, dropping a tray of cards containing the source was the ever-present nightmare, particularly if you couldn't be bothered to punch the serial numbers in columns 73 to 80
I have to admit I have run a program on a machine where core was mercury delay lines...
I have this painting in the attic that looks terrible!

[Rikard Qvarforth]

Hi Ivor ! thanks for all ..
i was wondering if you have included the tcp/ip and the http or/and the javaxml topics in the new book ? (like what parser tech you should use..)another one is if you have gone throw the new java IO ? what i am missing in the old book is a brief look on the java plattform .like jsp servlets etc. not so much but some so that you get the ide ..
Thanks !! Ivor ..
Excuse me for my bad english but what the heck java is worldwide

[Ivor Horton]

Hi Rikard,
new I/O and XML yes, but the other stuff no. It gets more difficult to know what to include and what to leave out. I don't like to include anything that I cannot cover sufficiently to make it useful. Servlets would need quite a lot of space to cover adequately and I don't have any more space in the book. If I has been able to keep what I had in the 1.3 edition, the book would be well over 1600 pages - and that's without stuff like servlets
One thing I considered was splitting the book into two - language in one and class lib use in another, but the feeling was the book would lose the rounded out sort of feel to it. As it stands, if you can start from P1 and get to P1150 you should be able to make a halfway decent attempt at writing a real Java app.

[Rikard Qvarforth]

thanks for the reply
its good that you cover some aspects over the XML
because XML is growing even we like it or not
but do you cover regex package and the syntax ? and do you ceep all example by example in the new book ? i love the examples, thats the only way you can learn (no not the only way but the main way ).
ps what are you doing when you not writing books ?? - besides sleep/writing books and just staying a live
/rille

[Michael Morris]

Hi again Ivor,
I haven't downloaded 1.4 yet because I'm in the middle of the Developer Certification and am pretty comfortable with 1.3. I understand that 1.4 has regex support. Does that mean I can finally put my knowledge of PERL out to pasture? That would be cause for celebration!
Michael Morris
SCJP2

[Ivor Horton]

Michael,
SDK 1.4 does support regex and the rules for expressions are much the same as in Perl so you should have no problem picking it up in Java.

[Ivor Horton]

Rikard,
Yes, regular expressions are covered in the 1.4 edition - with working examples.
When I'm not writing I'm looking at Javaranch forums

[Ambreen Haleem]

Hello Mr.Ivor,
I'm from Pakistan. I also happen to have your Begining Java 2 to be the first book i studied for Java. Infact i recently got your Visual C++ 6 book. There isn't very much jobs for Java programmers here in Pakistan but there are some work going on here to promote Java in Pakistan. I made my final project (WebBrowser) for my B.C.S using Java.
Dream to be a good programmer like you in the future.

[Jim Hall]

Hello Ivor,
I own many books on Java (30+) and have to admit yours looks the oldest (got the most use). It was one of my first and key in helping me pass the SCPJ. It is a no-brainer when someone asks my advice for a book to learn java. Looking forward to the new edition.