This revised edition of the classic Core Java™, Volume I–Fundamentals, is the definitive guide to Java for serious programmers who want to put Java to work on real projects.

Fully updated for the new Java SE 6 platform, this no-nonsense tutorial and reliable reference illuminates the most important language and library features with thoroughly tested real-world examples. The example programs have been carefully crafted to be easy to understand as well as useful in practice, so you can rely on them as an outstanding starting point for your own code.

Volume I is designed to quickly bring you up to speed on what’s new in Java SE 6 and to help you make the transition as efficiently as possible, whether you’re upgrading from an earlier version of Java or migrating from another language. The authors concentrate on the fundamental concepts of the Java language, along with the basics of user-interface programming. You’ll find detailed, insightful coverage of 

• Java fundamentals
• Object-oriented programming
• Interfaces and inner classes
• Reflection and proxies
• The event listener model
• GUI programming with Swing
• Packaging applications
• Exception handling
• Logging and debugging
• Generic programming
• The collections framework
• Concurrency

For detailed coverage of XML processing, networking, databases, internationalization, security, advanced AWT/Swing, and other advanced features, look for the forthcoming eighth edition of Core Java™, Volume II—Advanced Features (ISBN: 978-0-13-235479-0).

About The Author

Cay S. Horstmann is also coauthor of Core JavaServer Faces, Second Edition (Prentice Hall, 2007). Cay is a professor of computer science at San Jose State University, a Java Champion, and a frequent speaker at computer industry conferences.

Gary Cornell has been writing and teaching programming professionals for more than twenty years and is the cofounder of Apress. He has written numerous best-selling books for programming professionals, was a cofinalist for a Jolt Award, and won the Readers Choice award from Visual Basic Magazine.

Customer Reviews & Comments
"Core Java, Volume I - Fundamentals" is meant to teach Java to developers who already know another language. Or as they put it, "serious programmers ... with a solid background in a language other than Java." This is important as the book assumes a knowledge of programming concepts. As such, the authors can explain OO rather than how a loop works. The syntax diagrams and flow diagrams offer concise explanations. This edition (the eighth of the book) covers Java 6. I liked that each section was updated to reflect changes to the languages. The authors didn't just tack on some chapters about the new features. They integrated features as they made sense. More importantly, they updated existing examples to reflect the way they would be written if they were initially written today. This gives the reader appropriate exposure as to when to use new features. At the same time, the authors point out what was added in Java 1.4 so you can use it with an older version. There was even a screenshot of Windows Vista in the getting started section. The book is about 800 pages. Some of this is long classes and API extractions. The authors do highlight important code snippets with explanations first, so it is possible to skip these parts. I did like the feature of the API extractions that showed when methods were introduced. The authors explain Java in practice well including caveats. There are a few carefully labeled sections that are quite advanced. (proxys and new classloaders.) This is definitely not just an intro book! There was a bit of premature optimization. I don't see a need to worry about whether ArrayList is efficient unless it is a problem. At the same time, it is important to know why things work the way they do. I recommend this book if you are looking to learn Java or have only used certain pieces of it. Just be sure to read the TOC carefully as the authors branch out. For example, the inheritance chapter covers var args and reflection.