A change of brew and a few good articles

A site I won’t name left a bad taste in my mouth. A fresh crop of excellent articles on Root cleared it away. Let me start at the beginning. When I was a hatchling of a programmer just getting started with Java, I got hold of two books, Pavel Herout’s Java Language Textbook and Bruce Eckel’s Thinking in Java. I promptly put the second in a drawer because it looked difficult and got down to the “proper” study of Herout.

Once the first flush of youthful recklessness had passed, I found myself desperate to know how it all actually worked. What’s the heap? How does the garbage collector work? “Big Bruce” was still in the drawer, so I pulled it out and started reading. Looking back, Thinking in Java strikes me as the best thing I’ve ever read about programming. The book is already in its updated third edition and has a sequel, but you can read more in the review of the updated edition. I’ll just add that the English book is available as a free download from the author’s site.

Without further comment, I’ll also recommend an article on the jack-of-all-trades called ANT, developed under the umbrella of Jakarta.