Seems like i am out of luck lately when it comes to books. I must say this book was not really my type. Sometimes its not easy why but book is just a tough read, maybe it was the style or examples, im not sure.

The thing i did not like about the book was that examples drag for entire pages. I know its difficult to show some things in concise way but i think this book had the longest code examples i have ever seen : -)

Grails in action is an excellent book for all grails and groovy developers. It covers all main aspects of grails development and even more. In the same time it does all that within 450 pages. I liked reading the book as its written in a nice and easy English, good style and clear explanations. As other 'in action' books it does set high standard of both language and the content.

For some reason my Spring Tool Suite has a problem with grails clean target. Most of the time running clean script removes 'target/classes' folder after which i am getting errors like:

Error automatically restarting container: 
destination directory "/workspace/target/classes" 
does not exist or is not a directory

To get rid of the issue edit the file:

/grails-1.2.1/scripts/_GrailsClean.groovy

and add mkdir command at the end of cleanCompiledSources target

I have worked with Grails lately and i have to say it seems like it may be the technology i was looking for! I am a skeptic by nature but I am getting more and more excited about Grails. It is really a cool and deeply thought out framework for all web development needs.

Why is Grails better than Rails?

Some might say that jruby will let you do the same thing and keep it old school (ruby not groovy). To be honest, i don't like Ruby as a language that much. I have read some articles/books (just a few) and i have read some code as well. I must say it seems to me more like perl than Java. Maybe its just matter of personal taste but ruby seems little bit messy to me.

I have to admit that i did not really want to get into another language this year. Its so much effort and usually so little gain of it. But what can you do sometimes you have to ;-).

While evaluating web platform alternatives we began with JSF2/JSTL/JSP/Struts. None of them seemed suitable for our needs. None of them seemed usable either. We began to look around for much more lightweight frameworks and thats when we started looking at Grails and Spring MVC.

Ok, I admit it, I gave up after about 200 pages : -) In my defense I borrowed the book from work so I did not have to pay for it. Maybe thats why I did not have enough commitment to go through it.

Book should not have any 'beginning' nor 'novice' in the title, thats for sure. I is a bunch of specifications and very dry examples. If you hope it will get you going with Glassfish or Java EE you will be disappointed.

First of all i liked the book very much. I liked the description on overall Spring Framework architecture as well of the details of particular components.

Its a good beginning and great tutorial. While reading the book i realized how much better is spring now comparing to what it was a few years ago. Its a really great platform.

Lately i was readin some more about current Java based frameworks and development platforms. We even had some presentations from TOP players (Ill call them the Bestests) in Java world. To be honest i was very unimpressed. I started to look more critical on the Java community.

I needed a simple tool to automate mouse movements and delays on my PC. I like playing with Java so i wrote a simple one in a few hours.

Its a really simplistic app and it might have some bugs so please be understanding :-) But i could not find any free tool that would do exactly what i wanted to i thought i could share it to the public. Maybe someone will find it useful.

If you like it and want to modify it for your needs i think i might send you source code.

Setting up mouse control sequence

So to see mouse position click on track button, you can stop tracking if you are done. Then you move mouse where you want on the screen and write down location. Then write up a script like this:

Thats another great book! This time about Java

I would say everyone who wants to learn Java should read it. It shows you entire language with all its features and possible pitfalls.

Structure of the book is very good and it keeps language simple and understandable. No overcomplications.

I would say you can read some easy books like teach yourself java in 21 days or something then thinking in java and once you think you know it get yourself this book. It will show you stuff you did not imagine ;-)

That was one of the worst books i have ever bought. I got it on sale so i thought what the hell ... i can read some jsf (i was interested in ejb/jsp etc at that time).

I tried to read it for a long time but i could not read more than half of chapter at once. It was just horrible language.

Another thing i did not like at all was the way authors assume you already know all of it :- ) if i know what jsf is and how to use them i would not read the book right? well i could not get through this one.

There is no question about it, you will not teach yourself java in 21 days unless you are a programmer and worked as a programmer in other object oriented languages for some time :- )

Even that it seems difficult the book is actually not bad at all. Its way less detailed than thinking in java and is much lighter. You can read chapter after chapter not getting tired at all.

I liked the fact that it goes beyond language itself. It shows how to use ODBC, basics of xml and web services interacting as well as networking.

Well i guess there is no other thing to say as you have to read it.

Its a java must read book i guess. Its not perfect, but its rally good.

I read it like 5 or 6 years ago but i remember it was very rich. I also remember i did not like examples. They were horrible. Instead of showing a simple pronciple or creating more useful examples it used to have those dreadful foo-bar examples. I hate those! does not show you anything just makes you loose the interest.

Any way book is very good and you have to read it if you want to be serious about Java.

Thats a strange book. It prepares to EJB exam but does not really cove enough practical stuff.

You read the book but cant really practice stuff. I dont know was it because at that time there was no eull ejb container available easily to be setup like now glassfish? maybe because it would be to difficult to get through the process of installation ... i dont know.

Any way it covers nicely design patterns and some basics of EJB but wont teach you to be a EJB developer i guess.

Its a nice book especially if you are preparing for the JSP/Servlets Java exam. It seems to be a light book but it covers quite a lot.

Its funny and light as other head first books and it has quite a lot of information that you would need for the exam or jsp/servlets development.

I would recommend it to all beginners in jsp field as well as to people who plan to undertake sun's SCWCD exam.

Final score: 7/10