[.ca] TCP/IP Sockets in Java: Practical Guide for Programmers (ISBN 1558606858)

Very Well Laid Out Book:
This book, with only 116 pages, is very well laid out. It explains in detail that is somewhat rare in technical books such that any average java programmer should be able to follow it very well. Also, it keeps focus on its discussion so that it explains the main meat of the Sockets API in the 116 pages that make up the book. After reading this book, the average Java Programmer should be able to apply this knowledge to any Socket-needing application. One thing the book cautions the programmer about is how to avoid deadlock and gives the solution of using Threads, one for reading and one for writing, on both sides of the connection, to prevent deadlock in the case where the write methods block on both sides of the socket connection at the same time. I would recommend this book for anyone attempting to make a socket-based chatroom or socket-based multi-user internet game using Java, whether in the form of Applets or Applications, no matter the version of JDK, because this book stays in the core API that has been around for a while.

To the Point .. Easy to Follow:
TCP/IP Sockets in Java is a great way for any Java programmer to get started. The code examples are numerous yet thorough and clear. This book should be enough information to get any Java programmer started with the sockets API. There are a few things that this book is not. Its not a complete reference of the sockets API. Its not a thorough reference of TCP/IP. Finally, this book is not for people who are new to Java. Overall a great book if you want to get started with TCP/IP in Java.

The Right Book To Buy:
I very much agree with the other reviews on this site. This book hits the meat of using TCP/IP with Java. Some prerequisites for this book are the following topics. I recommend that you get a single book for each topic. * Basic Java Programming including I/O and Threads * The TCP/IP protocol suite and TCP/IP networking * Cryptography (recommended) * Java Security (recommended) You will need additional books if you want to hit topics such as these: Java's application-level networking API's, Servlets, JSP, RMI, CORBA. I also recommend this book because it lists references to 22 such supplemental books/documents.

I like it.:
Short, cheap and stays on topic. What more could you ask for? About the size of K & R and (inexpensive), two great features right there. I am so very tired of computer books that could kill me if they fell out of my shelf. This book gives lots of example code, exactly what you need to figure out how to make use of all those java classes.

Does not cover java 1.4 (NIO):
I will agree with the other reviewers that this is a really well written book. However, it does not cover using the NIO (java 1.4) networking API which is much faster and more efficient. So this book is very useful if you are still having to write for java 1.3. But if you are writing for java 1.4 (or 1.5), then it is of almost no value.