Comments about oreilly Java Threads, 3rd Edition:

One of the best things about this book is although this book was published in 2004, in my opinion it is still one of THE BEST books one can read on Java Threads.

For beginners like me, understanding multi-threading concepts is not really easy. But this book made them easy for me.

The book teaches you how to visualize the underlying concepts. The examples very clearly explain the concepts and are followed by authors' explanation ( the second best thing about this book ).

I know I'm reading this book in 2013 and there are new additions in the newer Java versions but this book covers the advanced concepts introduced with J2SE 5.0 so well that I am not missing much. Whatever little needs to be known, I will be able to understand it from the API docs- thanks to such great explanation of the foundation to advanced concepts in the book. Having said that, if the authors decide to come up with another edition of the book, I will buy that too cause I know it'll be worth it.

The first time I bought this book, I bought it from a local library. As I began reading this book, I realized I should have my own copy of it and I ordered it the same day. I'm glad I did so.

Not sure who, but some wise person said- if something can be read without effort, great effort has gone into its writing. I appreciate all the effort that has gone into the making of Java Threads Edition 3. Thank you, Scott Oaks and Henry Wong.

Comments about oreilly Java Threads, 3rd Edition:

Used one of the examples in this book as one of the references in my Operating System research paper.

Comments about oreilly Java Threads, 3rd Edition:

I happen not to agree with the previous review, everything is clearly explained in the book. For instance, p40, a lock is explained as:

When a method is declared synchronized, the thread that wants to execute it must acquire a token, which we call a lock (...) Only one thread can grab a lock at a time (...) Upon completion of the method, the lock is automatically released.

Sure, the thread topic is not for beginners, but since every program is going to use threads whether you want it or not, any self-respecting programmer should have a good knowledge of threads.

This book also covers all the new thread-related class of Java 5.0, which is the reason why I bought it.

Comments about oreilly Java Threads, 3rd Edition:

Very poor book. Many essential explanations are missing, possibly due in part to an apparent obsession with race conditions. Although race conditions are a very important topic, and they should be thoroughly covered in a book such as this, many of them can be avoided by knowing the basics, which this book does not explain well.

For instance, look at lock() and unlock(). What is being locked? What is being unlocked? Basic questions, right? We are never really told. Although there is much text devoted to these methods, it is left to the reader to figure out the answer to these questions.

The same is true for wait() and notify(). What is being waited on? Who is being notified? We are never really told, but rather we are left to try to put the descriptions together in a way that makes sense.

There are many other areas of total confusion (including many pages devoted to a "race condition" that apparently does not exist), but the above examples should give you an idea of the caliber of this book.

BTW, I have been in this business for 30+ years.