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The book contains fifty items divided into eight parts. The book is a mixture of design advice and language and API explanations. The book assumes that you have a working knowledge of Java, but are not an expert yet. I found the book useful. The coverage is not exhaustive, but the book contains a reasonable selection of topics. The writing style is sometimes a bit too narrative to my taste and the essence could have been slightly more highlighted. Depending on your experience, some topics will be more or less useful. Personally I would have left out yet another description of how theGridBagLayoutworks.

It is a pity that the design advice does not refer to known patterns and other reference material. On the overall however, most Java developers will learn from the topics covered in the book. The only negative point I can make is that some topics need more study than the few pages in which they are covered. For example, you will not write good concurrent programs by reading the one section on the synchronized keyword. Other sections warn you of danger, e.g. in using theHashtable, not only to override theequalmethod, but also thehashCodemethod. For some topics I did not mind having only a short introduction to them, because the simple fact that they were introduced to me was useful. If I need them I can easily search for more detailed information, for example this was the case for the garbage collection and reference sections.