电子书免费下载 An Introduction to Network Programming With Java

The market in general-purpose Java texts is an exceptionally well populated one, as can be seen from just a cursory examination of the programming language section of any major bookshop. Surprisingly, the market in Java network programming texts is a much less exploited one, featuring very few texts. It is true that the better general-purpose Java texts provide some guidance on aspects of network programming, but this almost invariably takes the form of rather superficial coverage, often relegated to the end of the particular text and offering little more than an outline of the relevant concepts. Even those few texts that are devoted specifically to network programming in Java (and one or two are very good indeed) are rather thick tomes that are probably of greatest use as reference texts. The truth of this assertion appears to be reinforced by the absence of practical exercises from such texts.

When I began work on the first edition of this work, my declared intention was to write a more 'streamlined' work that could serve equally as the core text on an undergraduate module and as the quick, clear, 'no-nonsense' guide required by a busy IT professional. Numerous examples and associated screenshots were provided, with the examples 'stripped down' to their bare essentials in order to avoid overwhelming the reader with too much detail. There is, of course, a level of detail below which it is impossible to go without omitting some of the essentials and this led to a few examples running over multiple pages. However, a conscious effort was made to keep this to a minimum and to provide adequate program comments where this did occur.

It was gratifying to find that the first edition was well received, but the time has now come to replace it with an updated version. The changes in this second edition fall into three categories: