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Java™ Puzzlers: Traps, Pitfalls, and Corner Cases 1st Edition, Kindle Edition

by Joshua Bloch (Author), Neal Gafter (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 100 ratings
See all formats and editions

"Every programming language has its quirks. This lively book reveals oddities of the Java programming language through entertaining and thought-provoking programming puzzles."

--Guy Steele, Sun Fellow and coauthor of The Java™ Language Specification

"I laughed, I cried, I threw up (my hands in admiration)."

--Tim Peierls, president, Prior Artisans LLC, and member of the JSR 166 Expert Group

How well do you really know Java? Are you a code sleuth? Have you ever spent days chasing a bug caused by a trap or pitfall in Java or its libraries? Do you like brainteasers? Then this is the book for you!

In the tradition of Effective Java™, Bloch and Gafter dive deep into the subtleties of the Java programming language and its core libraries. Illustrated with visually stunning optical illusions, Java™ Puzzlers features 95 diabolical puzzles that educate and entertain. Anyone with a working knowledge of Java will understand the puzzles, but even the most seasoned veteran will find them challenging.

Most of the puzzles take the form of a short program whose behavior isn't what it seems. Can you figure out what it does? Puzzles are grouped loosely according to the features they use, and detailed solutions follow each puzzle. The solutions go well beyond a simple explanation of the program's behavior--they show you how to avoid the underlying traps and pitfalls for good. A handy catalog of traps and pitfalls at the back of the book provides a concise taxonomy for future reference.

Solve these puzzles and you'll never again fall prey to the counterintuitive or obscure behaviors that can fool even the most experienced programmers.

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Previous page
  1. ISBN-13
    978-0321336781
  2. Edition
    1st
  3. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  4. Publisher
    Addison-Wesley Professional
  5. Publication date
    June 24, 2005
  6. Language
    English
  7. File size
    2362 KB
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

"Every programming language has its quirks. This lively book reveals oddities of the Java programming language through entertaining and thought-provoking programming puzzles."

--Guy Steele, Sun Fellow and coauthor of The Java™ Language Specification

"I laughed, I cried, I threw up (my hands in admiration)."

--Tim Peierls, president, Prior Artisans LLC, and member of the JSR 166 Expert Group

How well do you really know Java? Are you a code sleuth? Have you ever spent days chasing a bug caused by a trap or pitfall in Java or its libraries? Do you like brainteasers? Then this is the book for you!

In the tradition of Effective Java™, Bloch and Gafter dive deep into the subtleties of the Java programming language and its core libraries. Illustrated with visually stunning optical illusions, Java™ Puzzlers features 95 diabolical puzzles that educate and entertain. Anyone with a working knowledge of Java will understand the puzzles, but even the most seasoned veteran will find them challenging.

Most of the puzzles take the form of a short program whose behavior isn't what it seems. Can you figure out what it does? Puzzles are grouped loosely according to the features they use, and detailed solutions follow each puzzle. The solutions go well beyond a simple explanation of the program's behavior--they show you how to avoid the underlying traps and pitfalls for good. A handy catalog of traps and pitfalls at the back of the book provides a concise taxonomy for future reference.

Solve these puzzles and you'll never again fall prey to the counterintuitive or obscure behaviors that can fool even the most experienced programmers.



About the Author

Joshua Bloch is a principal engineer at Google and a Jolt Award-winner. He was previously a distinguished engineer at Sun Microsystems and a senior systems designer at Transarc. Josh led the design and implementation of numerous Java platform features, including JDK 5.0 language enhancements and the award-winning Java Collections Framework. He holds a Ph.D. in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University.

Neal Gafter is a software engineer and Java evangelist at Google. He was previously a senior staff engineer at Sun Microsystems, where he led the development of the Java compiler and implemented the Java language features in releases 1.4 through 5.0. Neal was a member of the C++ Standards Committee and led the development of C and C++ compilers at Sun Microsystems, Microtec Research, and Texas Instruments. He holds a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Rochester.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B001U5VJVS
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Addison-Wesley Professional; 1st edition (June 24, 2005)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ June 24, 2005
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 2362 KB
  • Simultaneous device usage ‏ : ‎ Up to 5 simultaneous devices, per publisher limits
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 298 pages
  • Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 032133678X
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 100 ratings

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.
Joshua Bloch

Joshua Bloch

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Joshua J. Bloch (born August 28, 1961) is a software engineer and a technology author, formerly employed at Sun Microsystems and Google. He led the design and implementation of numerous Java platform features, including the Java Collections Framework, the java.math package, and the assert mechanism. He is the author of the programming guide Effective Java (2001), which won the 2001 Jolt Award, and is a co-author of two other Java books, Java Puzzlers (2005) and Java Concurrency In Practice (2006).

Bloch holds a B.S. in computer science from Columbia University and a Ph.D. in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University. His 1990 thesis was titled A Practical Approach to Replication of Abstract Data Objects and was nominated for the ACM Distinguished Doctoral Dissertation Award.

Bloch has worked as a Senior Systems Designer at Transarc, and later as a Distinguished Engineer at Sun Microsystems. In June 2004 he left Sun and became Chief Java Architect at Google. On August 3, 2012, Bloch announced that he would be leaving Google.

In December 2004, Java Developer's Journal included Bloch in its list of the "Top 40 Software People in the World".

Bloch has proposed the extension of the Java programming language with two features: Concise Instance Creation Expressions (CICE) (coproposed with Bob Lee and Doug Lea) and Automatic Resource Management (ARM) blocks. The combination of CICE and ARM formed one of the three early proposals for adding support for closures to Java. ARM blocks were added to the language in JDK7.

Bloch is currently a faculty member of the Institute for Software Research at Carnegie Mellon University, where he holds the title "Professor of the Practice". In addition to his research, Bloch teaches coursework in Software Engineering.

Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars
4.6 out of 5
100 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

pro_crustes
5.0 out of 5 stars Into Java? Get This Book!
Reviewed in the United States on December 31, 2023
Verified Purchase
This is a great test of just how much you really know about Java, and an equally great way to up your game. The incomparable Joshua Bloch ("Effective Java") proves himself again with a series of often amazing challenges, most of which will surprise you. Some will humble you. All will make you want to try them on a colleague.

I teach programming a university. Puzzles from this book are how I start a lot lectures. The students love them.
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Bob Carpenter
5.0 out of 5 stars Ooh. Ow. Ouch. Eek. Argh. ... Aha.
Reviewed in the United States on November 22, 2005
Verified Purchase
My wife popped this book open after dinner. Big mistake -- we had planned to spend the night watching Firefly on DVD. She read the first puzzle. We went to the blackboard (yes, we're so geeky and our NY apartment's so small that there's a blackboard in the dining nook). Between us, we had half a dozen possible answers about what a three-line program was going to do. We found at least four boundary conditions and were pretty sure about two of them. For the record, the first puzzle she opened to involved the compound XOR assignment statement x^=y^=x^=y. They're not all that bit-fiddly; some of the other puzzles include class and method mazes, integer or double arithmetic oddities, unexpected exception/initialization interactions, string/charset twistiness, etc.

I thought I'd be good at this kind of puzzle. As an academic, I wrote about programming languages. I read Bloch's "Effective Java" book. Twice. I follow its advice religously and make my coworkers read it. I've read most of the source code for String, StringBuffer and the collections framework and I/O streams. I just came off a week-long coding project where I did exclusively bit-level I/O with all the shifts and masks you could ask for. I was wrong. I got about 1/5 of the puzzles right if I give myself partial credit for diagnosing the boundary condition in the question and having the right answer be in my top two or three guesses.

Unless you've written the bit fiddling parts of a JVM implementation, or are the kind of person who can remember minute details of the specification, you'll most likely suffer. And love it. Then you can relate the puzzles at gatherings of geeks and look on with a smug grin as they twist in the wind. These would be perfect interview questions for a sadistic HR person.

Overall, this book's a jaw-dropping, eye-opening, brain-melting overview of the kind of boundary conditions you can run into with very simple constructions. Most of the puzzles seem to involve implicit conversions done by the JVM, some involve 1.5 features, some involve class inheritance, others exceptions. Almost all of the puzzles contain links to the boundary-condition definition in the Java language spec.

I'll do better next time. Really.
115 people found this helpful
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Taz
4.0 out of 5 stars Good book but I wish there was more focus on OOP.
Reviewed in the United States on May 19, 2015
Verified Purchase
This is a great book but narrowly focused on demystifying java quirks that are mostly taken care of by more recent libraries from commons. I wish this book had some puzzles specific the traps found in object orientation since Java is after all an Object oriented programming language. For that I'd recommend this OOP design course found at the link: https://www.udemy.com/mastering-object-oriented-design-in-java/?dtcode=MQRCrDp2WESy

You can probably find a coupon somewhere for this course.
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Constantine Kulak
5.0 out of 5 stars Exceptionally good
Reviewed in the United States on May 30, 2014
Verified Purchase
As a keen programmer, I've read more than hundred books about all aspects of software development. This one is in my Top-10, together with Llama Book, Design and Evolution of C++, The Deadline and few others.

It is a kind of book that you simply can't stop reading. For anyone familiar with Java it will be full of amazing discoveries, regardless of how well you know the language. The book is only about 250 pages, and it is full of intelligent humor, which is ironic and friendly at the same time, making it very easy to read. I appreciate the way it is spiced with some optical illusions (you'll find a reference in the end). There's a complete summary of all "lessons learned", which fits in about 10 pages of very condensed programming wisdom -- I would've bought this book for this chapter alone.

All in all -- amazing book, one of the true gems. Don't think twice -- buy it now :)
3 people found this helpful
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Charles
5.0 out of 5 stars Great book
Reviewed in the United States on June 6, 2006
Verified Purchase
This is really another excellent book I've seen on Java. Authors try to model/abstract real-world senarios into some "silly trivia" puzzles. You may say they are "Not puzzles, just silly trivia", but if you are experienced Java developer, you will figure out what they really mean and then smile on them. I have to say I was lost in some of those puzzles before in my real-world programming history...

It's not easy to address real-world problems in such a generic way. This book really makes the complication simple. Great job!
3 people found this helpful
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WiseGuy
5.0 out of 5 stars a must-have for Java professionals
Reviewed in the United States on October 23, 2014
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If you want to be a Java guru, you need this. Goes well with "Effective Java" by same author.
The segments are short enough for reading in odd moments.
I don't always retain what I learn from this, so I go back to it frequently when I get over-confident of my geek cred.
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Ramin
4.0 out of 5 stars Good to know
Reviewed in the United States on June 12, 2010
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As the title suggests it is a puzzlers book. Reading this book opens your perspective wrt the language and its implementation. All in all a good (recreational) book.
One person found this helpful
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Jeff
5.0 out of 5 stars Well worth the read
Reviewed in the United States on August 9, 2015
Verified Purchase
Some examples are contrived, but there is still a lot of information in here that is important. One downside is that the book is dated. A new revision to include lambdas would be great.
3 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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Bluehats
5.0 out of 5 stars Grym bok!
Reviewed in Sweden on January 6, 2024
Verified Purchase
Fantastiskt koncept! Trots de många exemplen gör Bloch ett enastående insats med att pedagogiskt förklara, visualisera och by-pass:a traps och pitfalls som finns gömda i språket.

Vill du piffa upp din Java-portfölj och Ace:a nästa intervju? Besök vår hemsida
Betyg: 5,0 🏆
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noname
5.0 out of 5 stars 5 Points - A must read for all java professionals.
Reviewed in Germany on May 13, 2018
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It is the first time I write that phrase in a review: This book is a MUST READ. I strongly recommend this book to Java programmers. Some of the puzzles in the book are real eye-openers concerning somewhat surprising and counterintuitive behaviour of Java.
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Shashwat
5.0 out of 5 stars Think you know Java ? Get ready to be proven wrong!
Reviewed in India on February 18, 2017
Verified Purchase
Try not falling in one Trap - That you know Java!

This book is as best as it can get. I started reading this book, thinking myself as a pretty good programmer, and when I completed, I was in a state of disorder. This book would question those many years, when you programmed in Java.

It is truly valid with Java 8, so the material is up to date as well.
2 people found this helpful
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vince
5.0 out of 5 stars trés instructif
Reviewed in France on December 7, 2012
Verified Purchase
On en apprend beaucoup sur Java, a quand une nouvelle édition mise à jour avec des nouveaux puzzles java 7
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Samuel Halliday
5.0 out of 5 stars Read for fun, not to be a better programmer
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 7, 2007
Verified Purchase
Josh Bloch/Neal Gafter have a talent for giving concise coding wisdom with rock solid examples, this book is no different to Effective Java in that respect.

However, those expecting to hear coding philosophies and common pitfalls to avoid are not going to find them here. This book is about exactly what is says on the cover: corner cases. You may never encounter any of these issues in your entire Java career.

That said, the puzzles are insanely difficult and I found them very entertaining to read. There are possibly 2 or 3 puzzles in the entire book that are "cheap tricks", but the rest are all to do with subtleties in the language itself. If I had any criticism it would be that the puzzles go straight from puzzle to explanation without explicitly showing the output as an intermediary step... the author suggests that you run the programs and try to reach an explanation yourself. I tend to read books when travelling or when taking a break from the computer screen, so this was not practical for me.

If you haven't read Effective Java, I'd strongly recommend you read it first. I'd recommend this book to those that like a challenge or enjoy reading about Java subtleties.
4 people found this helpful
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