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Dear Reader,
Thank you for choosing Java SE 7 Programming Essentials. This book is part of a family of premium-quality Sybex books, all of which are written by outstanding authors who combine practical experience with a gift for teaching.
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Sybex, an Imprint of Wiley
To Jocelyn, my love
Acknowledgments
Just hours before this writing, I received an email from Kathryn Duggan, this book’s development editor, saying the last chapter had now entered the pitiless, gaping maw of production. Let the grinding and forging begin. For this part of the process, I have to listen at a distance and make sense of the whirs and groans this material might force from the machine. I have to wonder what rough edges I missed that will now be cast in bronze, buffed into a high relief, and given prominence. What best parts will end up in some corner shadow or made to rest against the wall? I don’t know. The wait is almost as hard as the writing.
What we’ve put into this book, though, is our combined best effort to oil that machine, a result of collaboration, faith, rerevising, and just a little lip biting. As this book goes into the mill, I am proud to have worked with every one of its contributors.
Kathi guided this project with an unfailingly positive spirit and saw it through more than one rough patch, all the while having to pick up and move several hundred miles, then find a house. Without her diligence, kind words, and tolerance for my sprint-and-coma style of submitting chapters, I am not sure I’d have gotten this far, at least not in 2012. Thank you, Kathi; no one can expect the level of effort and encouragement you put into this book.
Ernest Friedman-Hill served as my technical editor, checking both the code and the rationale of the narrative for accuracy and consistency. You, good reader, will never again see such a bargain struck for a book of this sort. Ernest is an accomplished computer scientist, a professional of talents and abilities beyond my ken, an author in his own right, and a JavaRanch colleague whose work and contributions I have admired for over a decade. This book could have become a pale farce without his attention, his advice, and his drive on improving, well, everything. Yes, everything, right down to creating an alternate cover (which was ignored, sadly). I owe him big-time. I pledge here to pay his generosity forward. When you come across a section you think is especially sharp, I’d be pleased if you remembered Ernest for it (too). Paul Nahay reviewed the manuscript and, so far as I could tell, observed each punctuation mark with suspicion. He uncovered error after error we somehow missed. These are errors an author might forgive as understandable lapses, but errors that a disinterested eye might view as a sign of wavering competence. It can be a thankless role, and Paul did it fearlessly. Thank you, Paul.
Jeff Kellum, the acquisitions editor, might have had to vouch for me more than once. Several of my first drafts came in like a New Year’s Eve walk home: late, unintelligible, and in dire need of more solids. Thank you, Jeff, for this opportunity and for your faith. I hope the work here adds to your credit.
Pete Gaughan, the editorial manager, watched this process throughout and kept me grounded in the demands of publishing, He reminded me, tactfully and more than once, one must feed Production properly. He threw a lot of rules at me, sure, of the sort I accept with quiet grudging and irritation. He did it without apology, however, and I can’t say how much I appreciate that. Thanks, Pete, for holding the line and keeping me honest.
Many people play a part in getting a book to print, and I’m sorry I haven’t met the people who worked to make this book handsome and well-lit. The people at Sybex I did talk to made me feel it was all in good hands. I’d do this again with them. On a practical note, their attention to detail, from comma splices to color schemes, impressed me. I’d have had better luck throwing pork chops past a wolf. Thank you to production editor Christine O’Connor, copyeditor Judy Flynn, and compositors Cody Gates, Craig Johnson, and Kate Kaminski at Happenstance Type-O-Rama.
What was possible here, however, begins with my students and colleagues. I taught my first Java course in 1995. Today, I wonder how I ever got the nerve. For everyone who said you learned a concept or a technique from me that still pays off, or just told me I added something to the good, thank you. You’re the reason I still teach this subject and why I thought some written words might help a few more people on their way.
About the Author
Michael Ernest entered the world of Java programming the way many people do. He spent three years as a bank teller, operated a forklift, earned a degree in English at an aggie college, spent four years as a firefighter, earned an advanced degree in English literature, sold baseball cards and comic books, began doctoral studies at Claremont Graduate School, and taught night classes. He then took an entry-level job in data processing at Bank of America, followed by a job at a global chemical-manufacturing concern and then jobs at Access Graphics, Lockheed Martin, General Electric, Synergistic Computer Solutions, and FusionStorm. He still has all the never-quite-vested retirement plans and darling little 401(k) accounts to prove it.
In that time, Ernest was once left alone for three weeks with a shelf of abandoned O’Reilly books and a SPARC IPX computer. One entire 435 MB drive and 48 whole MB of RAM! He discovered a passion for Sun Microsystems technology to add to his passion for adult learning and has enjoyed teaching computing courses ever since.
Ernest started his own subject matter–expert group, Inkling Research, in 1999. He currently consults, teaches, writes, and speaks on several topics, including Solaris-based technologies such as ZFS, Containers, and DTrace; Java SE/EE programming; software architecture; fault analysis; and performance management. He writes and maintains his own courses in several technologies and products, including DTrace, Solaris 11, GlassFish, Tomcat, ActiveMQ, and ServiceMix. He has written some standard courses for Sun and Oracle and served as an adviser and reviewer for a few more.
Often asked to speak on minor topics of limited appeal at the last minute, Ernest has spoken at JavaOne, TheServerSide Java Symposium, and Oracle OpenWorld. He very nearly spoke to five people at a conference session in 2011, but then they announced snacks over the loudspeaker.
Ernest lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife, Jocelyn; a teenage daughter who loves marching band; and a son who will attend a college you’ve never heard of in the fall of 2012. Ernest studies Kung Jung Mu Sul and tai chi and claims the record for the least possible aptitude for the guitar among people who won’t give up. His first and only 500 GB hard drive is holding steady at one-third full.