← Back to context

Comment by legerdemain

3 years ago

In the same series, there's also "A Little Java" by Matthias Felleisen, one of the creators of Racket (a popular Lisp).

https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262561150/a-little-java-a-few-p...

Is it still good? I see it was published in 1997.

I like the style of these books, and might read this one - I'm just worried that Java has changed quite a bit since then. Is it still, say, 90% OK?

  • It's mostly a novelty today. Felleisen is a programming language theorist, and him writing a little Java tutorial sounds absurd.

    The book itself takes you on a journey to reinvent the Visitor pattern, in a version of Java that predates generics. You can probably find a better explainer for the Visitor pattern in Java.

    • Thanks. I see it for sale for £4 second hand, so maybe I should buy it for the novelty value alone. I presume I shouldn't try to refresh my java from it though.

And The Little MLer.

  • Which, it seems, is out of print and I guess because a lot of people want a complete set of this series, costs > 500USD to buy used?? Woah. I should get my hands on the others while they're still in print.