There should be a book like this for every programming language ever invented. Java Examples in a nutshell goes through the nuts and bolts of the java language exactly how it says it will, through example. Basically, for just about every basic tool of programming you can think of, there is a little section in this book which gives you some code to look at in order to understand what is going on through a bit of reverse engineering and a text bit describing what has been written.

This book, along with its companions in the series (Java in Nutshell, Java Foundation Classes in a Nutshell and Java Enterprise in a nutshell), provide a very comprehensive and thorough reference by which one may learn to program in Java. Personally, these are the only two books that I have ever had that describe the Java programming language and I'm learning Java quite quickly and easily at this point (however, i do have a good computer science background). I bought this book and "Java in Nutshell" to teach myself Java, and I've found that I pretty much ignore the other book and use this one exclusively.

This book not only covers the basic parts of Java like "Java in a Nutshell" does, but it covers all parts, showing you how to use Swing and other fun parts of Java. At this point, I haven't explored this book as thoroughly as I would like, but as my experience with Java grows, I'm sure my use for this book will become even greater.

There are some weak points of this book as well. Some of the things that it covers aren't exactly what you are looking for, so you have to dig around a bit to find the code that will suit your needs the best. One example of this is its coverage of linked lists, which covers an implementation of linked lists that was created for an earlier version of Java rather than code examples of the LinkedList class that was created in the latest version (this lead to a bit of head pounding on my side, but it all turned out OK in the end).

For a programmer, this book is golden, as it will provide you quick examples on how you accomplish simple tasks using the java language, which will allow you to build bigger and better applications for your needs. While the style is very terse, the information contained in this book is extraordinary and I would suggest it to anyone.

Recommended: Yes