Ask HN: Good Java books for aspiring Clojurians? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Good Java books for aspiring Clojurians?

28 pointsrbxbx16 comments

I feel I would be much more effective in Clojure (and consequently, the Java ecosystem) if I spent some time with Java, or were at least more familiar with it. With the wealth of Java books, it is a bit intimidating to choose one...

So HN: What would be a good Java book for a Clojurian with a solid OO background, but no Java experience?

View on HN

There are probably more than my recommendation of the Goetz book. Most of the topics that will be relevant from a Clojure perspective boil down to (in no particular order):

- Classpath

- Swing API calls

- Classpath

- Maven

- Exceptions

- Interfaces

- Primitives

- Arrays

- Collections framework

- and Classpath

Did I miss anything?

These are the main issues that have caused me pain in my usage of Clojure, so you're fairly on the mark. Some of the issues lend themselves to google more than others, but it would be nice to have some sort of tome (in preferably less than 800 pages, but perhaps that is asking for too much).

There must be one out there in the sea of Java books, but if there is I have yet to encounter it.

You missed Classpath :P

Effective Java (2nd Edition) by Joshua Bloch: http://www.amazon.com/Effective-Java-2nd-Joshua-Bloch/dp/032...

It's not for beginner Java programmers, but if you have experience in other similar programming languages you may get away with it.

Awesome, there's a copy of this on the bookshelf at work.

Will report back with it's friendliness(or lack there of) to beginning Java devs.

I'm not sure I would agree. "Effective Java" is a great Java book and absolutely recommended reading to know more Java. However, many of the tips provided are meant to address Java-specific foibles -- most, if not all, are addressed by using Clojure in the first place.

You are probably right. I guess the OP is trying to learn more about the Java ecosystem, rather than simply the language per se. In that sense, your comment about Maven and Classpath is most likely spot on.

#1. "Java Concurrency in Practice" http://www.amazon.com/Java-Concurrency-Practice-Brian-Goetz/...

#2. ... hmm, that might be it.

In addition, can anybody suggest something more along the lines of Jeffrey Richter's CLR via C# for the JVM/Java? CLR via C# covers a wide range of topics about how garbage collection, threading, appdomains, etc. work under the CLR using examples from C#, which I think would be more useful for learning what you need to know about Java and the JVM than your typical Java programming book.

I'd be willing to bet that this book http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Java-TM-Virtual-Machine/dp... covers that, but I've not personally read it.

Java Puzzlers. It's a fun book that teaches you to really understand the language by making you deal with its corner cases. Highly recommended.

As a long time Java programmer I recommend these two:

http://www.amazon.com/ERLANG-Programming-Francesco-Cesarini/...

http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Erlang-Software-Concurrent...

Okay, just kidding. =)

On a serious note, Effective Java is one of the best out there.

Both of these are great :)

I picked these because the big box book resellers stock them (I think you're looking for background on things like primitives/autoboxing, java.util.concurrent, the JVM's startup options, profiling/debug tools, and maybe tips that make rhickey's clojure source easier to read):

http://www.amazon.com/Core-Java-TM-I-Fundamentals-8th/dp/013...

http://www.amazon.com/Java-Good-Parts-Jim-Waldo/dp/059680373...

The Java Tutorials are great for people new to the Java Platform: http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E17409_01/javase/tutorial...

Of course, the focus is the Java language... but there are lots of practical examples.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com