Java: The Complete Reference

by Herbert Schildt

The Definitive Java Programming Guide

In The Complete Reference, Eighth Edition, bestselling programming author Herb Schildt shows you everything you need to develop, compile, debug, and run Java programs. Updated for Java Platform, Standard Edition 7 (Java SE 7), this comprehensive volume covers the entire Java language, including its syntax, keywords, and fundamental programming principles. You'll also find information on key elements of the Java API library. JavaBeans, servlets, applets, and Swing are examined and real-world examples demonstrate Java in action. In addition, new Java SE 7 features such as try-with-resources, strings in switch, type inference with the diamond operator, NIO.2, and the Fork/Join Framework are discussed in detail.

Coverage

Data types and operators Control statements Classes and objects Constructors and methods Method overloading and overriding Interfaces and packages Inheritance Exception handling Generics Autoboxing Enumerations Annotations The try-with-resources statement Varargs Multithreading The I/O classes Networking The Collections Framework Applets and servlets JavaBeans AWT and Swing The Concurrent API Much, much more

Genres: Programming, Computer Science, Technology, Technical, Reference, Nonfiction, Software

1926 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 14, 2004

About the author

Best-selling author Herbert Schildt has written extensively about the Java, C++, C, and C# programming languages. His books have sold millions of copies worldwide and have been widely translated. Herb's books have been used in education, corporate training, and individual study.
Although he is interested in all facets of computing, Herb's primary focus is computer languages, especially the standardization of languages. He was a member of the original ANSI committee that standardized the C language in 1989, and he was a member of the ANSI/ISO committee that updated that standard in 1999. He was a member of the original ANSI/ISO committee that standardized C++ in 1998 and he was a member of the ANSI/ISO committee that updated the standard for C++ in 2011.

Herb holds both graduate and undergraduate degrees from the University of Illinois, Urbana/Champaign.

Reviews

[Max Savchenko · Rating 4 out of 5]

Хороший справочник по синтаксису языка и составу его библиотек. Эдакий бумажный javadoc. Множество примеров кода с подробнейшим разъяснением. Но эта книга не про Java best practices (за этим лучше обратиться к Effective Java за авторством Joshua Bloch), да и сторонние средства и библиотеки вообще не затронуты. В общем, если вам нужно понять возможности Java, а у вас нет доступа к javadoc, то книжка пригодится. Ну и на полке еще она солидно смотрится.

[Raja.r.csp]

This is the first book, I came across while looking for Java books; But, to be honestly saying, I don't feel anything special in this book. The author knows how to confuse the newcomers about advanced concepts like threading, collections.

Still I am able to remember that collections were messed up in his explanations.

But, the good point is, basic programming concepts in this book (Up to String chapters) are easy.

I would rate this book 4 out 10.

[Ahmad · Rating 5 out of 5]

نمی دونم چی شد که این کتاب و به عنوان اولین کتاب آموزش جاوا خوندم ولی عالی بود. مثال ها بهتر از این و ساده تر از این نمی تونستند باشند. چند قسمتی که با بقیه ی کتاب های جاوا مقایسه کردم خیلی کامل تر توضیح داده شده بودند، مثل Annotation و Concurrent Programming و ...
کاش هر فصل 5 تا تمرین هم داشت در این صورت بهترین بود!!!
انشاءالله کتاب بعدی دایتل!

[Nada Elmi · Rating 5 out of 5]

كتاب جميل كمدخل للغة الجافا استعرته من المكتبة ولم أكمله قراءته قرأت البداية فقط
شرحه سهل و سلسل يشرح لك في البداية الكتاب عن بداية لغات البرمجة الى أن يصل إلى لغة الجافا
كتاب ملم بالمعلومات الوفيرة.

[Ivan Soto · Rating 5 out of 5]

One heck of a Java 9 reference book.

This is an excellent reference work. Its no-nonsense to-the-point examples were great help. I wish this edition much success, such as solid sales because it sure deserves it.

[Sofyanuli · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the best book Java. I know all about Java with the books.

[Suzanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really good reference book.

[Fattoomah · Rating 5 out of 5]

The most useful resource to learn java programming language..
I love it..

[Kapil · Rating 4 out of 5]

Its a good reference book for beginners. The language is easy, the examples are crisp and concise. Covers lots of topics on Core Java!

[Devansh Maurya · Rating 4 out of 5]

The ultimate book to learn Java

[Dmytro · Rating 4 out of 5]

Java: The Complete Reference 11th edition.
Review notes (to be updated)

What I didn't like:
1) Brief modules coverage, but these is another specialized book about them on the market.
2) Unclear and rushed nio2 discussion.
3) File watcher only mentioned in a single sentence in the end of the chapter. Need to go online for examples and documentation.
4) Explore more yourself about lambdas. This book discusses functional interface and briefly rushes through such an important topic. Again, there are specialized books about this matter.
5) Poor new network coverage. Cookies and sessions skipped completely.
6) Poor coverage of java.function, just a table with interfaces and advice to explore it myself.
7) Mysterious Security Manager and exceptions thrown by it appears throughout the book. (Anyway it's already deprecated in newer Java versions)
8) Several words about Classloader. If you need/want to understand about it and find usage patterns, go to oracle documentation.
9) Only single paragraph about logging. Expected at least a page. How to initialize a logger, where to initialize and call it, should it be a singleton and static, in main method or somewhere else?
10) Websockets, asynchronous http is not covered at all.
11) Pretty basic java.time coverage. Not a single word about comparison or Duration.

Reference is not as complete as I've expected. I still need to grab my laptop, go online and find documentation and examples about lots of stuff.
I don't expect detailed examples and discussion of best practices, but I want that everything related to Java and its standard library is mentioned with a brief explanation what it is, where and why to use it and a simple example.

Author makes assumptions throughout the book that something is too complicated or specialized and the reader won't be using it. Yet, sometimes it's expected from java developers to know about such "rare" stuff and it's use cases.

I agree that deep and detailed coverage of most topics are out of the scope of this book, but from a complete reference I expect at least basic mention. There is a class in the package, here it's methods, here basic example of usage. Not a single sentence somewhere in the middle of the 1000+ pages.

In the ideal complete reference I see more diagrams displaying packages/modules structure and classes/interfaces hierarchy. It would be extremely useful.

GUI chapters (events, awt) and III part (Swing) gives solid but too basic introduction to GUI programming. It was like reading several blog posts for novice. After that, I opened oracle documentation on Swing with StackOverflow and stayed there for several weeks while developing simple pet project.

Summary:
Got mixed feelings about the book. It helped me to sort things out about Java in a week or two, but I have several years of experience programming in different languages (Python, Go, JS). Maybe for novice it would be more useful. I used two packs of color stickers to mark important things, yet I doubt I will return to this book.

[Carl Leibniz · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book does exactly what it sets out to do, namely, it provides a complete reference of the Java programming language. Although I think this book is helpful to Java developers of all experience levels, it probably is not for complete beginners because the author assumes the reader is familiar with the common jargon.

[EmReads · Rating 5 out of 5]

I hold this book close to my heart. Because it burned with me in the fire of avenge for 3 days during my Uni. At last I found my peace. And Java turned out to be my first successful mutual love. LOL

Now I pick this book up with the hope to get back to the Java world.
It is already a 5 star book for me.

[Dwarakanath Reddy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best book for beginners. Must have one for programmers.

[Alvaro Alcocer Sotil · Rating 5 out of 5]

Java a fondo: fundamentos, ejemplos, comparativa con otros lenguajes de programación, patrones de diseño...un lujo de libro de referencia

[Vadym Serdyuk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book as a paper reference of Java, but not good enough from the learning perspective. Better to chose something else as a starting point for Java learning.

[Sushant Sharma · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not that great book. A kind of reference book for Java 8.

[Amadey · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is not a book for learning. this is a Java developer's guide.

[Zaid Aslam · Rating 5 out of 5]

nice book

[Kedijik · Rating 5 out of 5]

Herbert's writing reminded me so much of my uni classes. I didn't appreciate at the time but our professors gave so much context to how a language comes together, the historical context to their core paradigms and how they stack up vs other languages. This shows a deeper understanding and care vs just getting you to be a functional coder. I absolutely loved his tone and the level of detail he chose to cover in this reference. Sure, you won't finish it in 24 hours or know all there is to know about java once you do finish, but you will definitely have a balanced foundation to start building experience on. Love the book.

[Ashwin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really good book on JAVA programming language. I went through the 7th and 9th edition both.
If you are reading this for the first time and you are new to Java or Software development in general, I would recommend you reading the first two sections - Java language and libraries and complimenting it with a udemy/youtube playlist and coding on HackerRank/Leetcode (depending on your comfort ).

Chapters on collection and threading must be coupled with programming videos , for newbies, as I think they could have been improved.

If you are going towards Springboot, just read the first section and you may want to check out 'Springboot in action'.

[Sowmya's book world · Rating 4 out of 5]

Complete Reference Is the one book which gives you top to bottom knowledge of the entire Thing.

The people reading it for the first time might feel little Boring but the explaination and the content is very good. All the concepts are very well
defined.

[Christian Tjhai · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was a great book, but it is more simple to see it directly from a Web page because you can always jumping and use the Browser Search (CTRL + F) function to do a quick search.

But this book was a great job.

[Shannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not the best book to learn Java from, but once you know the basics this book is an excellent reference. Schildt did a great job with the organization, the explanations are clear and the examples illustrative.

[Justin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Its a useful book but since it gives equal weight to all parts of the API regardless of age it is mostly filled with stuff I won't reference. The parts that are useful I'd probably just search for online.

[Khalil · Rating 4 out of 5]

For any beginner who wants to learn the basics of JAVA

[Dmitry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good, with wide coverage.

[Indra Kiran]

java book

[Shan Wijenayaka · Rating 4 out of 5]

it has everything clear and perfectly. But it took more time than i expected to complete.it is worth to have your own hard copy.

[Zaid · Rating 5 out of 5]

What to expect from Herbert Schildt? FIVE STARTS!

It's totally worth it to have this book in your bookshelves.