Better, Faster, Lighter Java

This book seems to be an equal mix of pragmatic preaching and technical examples. The book makes sense, and if you're a person who thinks that J2EE applications are bloated, slow, and hard to maintain, then you'll love this book. Keep an open mind and take in what the authors are presenting.

"Better, Faster, Lighter Java" does a great job of walking the reader down a path to successful J2EE projects. In the vein of "Bitter Java" and "Bitter EJB", it exposes some of the myths -- both procedural and technical -- in today's J2EE world. Additionally, it goes a step further than the "Bitter" series by providing holistic solutions to managing and implementing successful projects, rather than localized solutions to specific anti-patterns.The first few chapters provide excellent coverage of practical agile development, as is often seen in the real world. Bruce and Justin explain the motivations behind concepts like test-driven development, continuous integration, scope definition and creep, and the trade-offs of coupling. They then show examples of how to implement these concepts in an enterprise Java project. These concepts are absolutely critical to any non-trivial project, as they make or break the ongoing maintainability of a project. Anyone who has not used agile processes in the real world (i.e., anyone who thinks that tests belong in the QA department only) should read this book just for those chapters.The book then continues to discuss common framework components and how they interact, including the pros and cons of different persistence and container strategies. In an interesting twist, the authors analyze the framework components discussed against the criteria for successful projects established earlier.One of the points that the authors make is that a project should do one thing, and do it well. This book focuses on one thing -- a high-level analysis of how to execute on a successful development project. This is not a definitive reference guide on any of the technologies or processes discussed. Rather, it distills out the essence from the various types of components that you will encounter in your project, and puts them together in an easy-to-follow format.One gripe that I had was that the Hibernate and Spring chapters delved a little too deep into their respective topics. I would have preferred to see more coverage of other aspects of the development cycle (preparation of content for hand-over to the UI design team, the role of Swing / SWT front-ends in enterprise development, etc.) rather than more depth on particular framework components.

I was a big fan of Bruce Tate's "Bitter Java", where he described some of the big bad problems of servlet/JSP development--the magic servlet, the monolithic JSP, etc. They were lessons I learned the hard way on the job, from having to maintain and extend code that fit right into those categories. Here, Bruce and his co-author Justit fight a different dragon--that of bloat and overcomplexity in Java application development environments. They explain why it happens, sort of acceding to its inevitability, but at the same time shows what we can do about it. Without advocating specific frameworks or techniques, they demonstrate how one can build solutions that don't depend on bloat and overcomplexity. In a world where everyone developing new APIs and frameworks is *claiming* that they don't want to become "the next EJB", unfortunately there are already too many "next EJBs" already out there and more seem to come every day. Bruce and Justin do justice to the notion that the best solution often is the simplest, and lead the pack in the movement to "take back Java" from the tendency towards "flexibility through complexity".

If I were looking for a Spring or Hibernate book, this one would let me down. But that's not what Gehtland and Tate are trying to do. They are showing why Spring and Hibernate are important, and how they have passed up enterprise java beans. They have shown basic rules for lightweight development, and they have done it effectively. The book is simple, well-written, and in conflict with established J2EE development. I get into the emphasis on JUnit.I also like how Gehtland and Tate show me more than programming. They let me see how companies sell. They show me how a better process can work. I like extreme programming, but my manager doesn't. They give me some good ideas about how to use the best parts without doing all of XP. I also like the idea of showing the principles, and then seeing how those principles apply to open source software, and then showing me how to put them into use. I don't think that the book would have been useful if they would have simply tried to invent some application that fit their model. Instead, they picked a couple of open source projects that seem to do what they are advocating. Lighter Faster java is a home run. If you're looking for a Spring book, just go buy Expert J2EE One on One. If you want to understand why Spring, and other technologies like it, are important, get Lighter Faster Java. I can understand how to program Spring and Hibernate with tutorials on line. This book gives me something far more valuable. Insight.I think I'm also going to pick up one for my boss.

Better, Faster, Lighter starts by explaining the basic problem in J2EE, complexity and API bloat, and then builds around five principles that should guide Java application development. Each of these principles are enclosed in an individual chapter, and in the second half of the book, these principles are explained using open source frameworks and example code. The most useful chapter for me was the chapter called "You Are What You Eat" as it explains alternatives to the standard J2EE architecture. It discusses all the major technologies that J2EE architects and developers care about - XML, Web Services, Session and Entity EJBs, Distribution etc, and gives scenarios under which it is suitable or unsuitable to choose each. This is the sort of information that is useful for persons who make architectural or design choices. The book also proposes two alternate deployments to the traditional 3-tiered architecture and gives reasons why these would lead to improved performance and lower complexity. This chapter explains how to make the technical decisions that will impact application development down the road.This book gives an introduction to two of the most popular open source frameworks today - Spring and Hibernate, and argues that they have become successful as they focus on simplifying Java development. The chapters on Hibernate and Spring are relatively short at 22 and 25 pages respectively, and so should not be relied upon for a detailed exposition into these frameworks. Persons wanting to get up to speed with these technologies should buy Rod Johnson's Expert One on One J2EE Development without EJB, or Matt Raible's Spring Live, as well as the Hibernate in Action when these books are released. But the chapters fit nicely into the overall argument in favor of simple tools that help simplify development. The Spring chapter explores the JPetstore sample application that uses IBatis as the persistence layer. Later on Bruce Tate discussed moving to Hibernate, and also supports the use of JDO. Better, Faster, Lighter Java is a little different from the traditional Java/J2EE books, and is written in a conversational, rather than a technical style. Thus it's more useful for persons seeking the big picture surrounding Java development, rather for pure techies. Relatively few books focus on the why of application development, and I recommend this book as one of these. If you enjoy reading authors such as Rod Johnson, Martin Fowler, and Scott Ambler, then this book won't disappoint.