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Books

All the books here I used for my work and programming. Mostly I own the books, sometimes I just borrowed the book from the library, anyway I picked up for this listing only those I considered as the best ones. It's possible there are better books or somebody disagrees with my comments, in any case, please, let me know here.

Java 2D

these books about java 2D are the best I read, even if I wrote something negative, they are the best of all java 2D books

Vincent J. Hardy: Java 2D API Graphics, Sun Microsystems Press, Prentice Hall buy book buy book buy book , get the source code here One of the best computer books I ever had. Simple explanations even of difficult things, no errors, colored results of code examples, Graphics Layer Framework, CD, this book is superb. This and Refactoring book are the diamonds between the emeralds.

Lawrence H. Rodrigues: Building Imaging Applications with Java Technology, Addison-Wesley buy book buy book buy book , get the source code here Contains in deep explanation of JAI (Java Advanced Imaging). Excellent pictures and real life problems. Includes intro to the server side too. Although 2D can be done little bit better, I like the book especially for real problems and solutions.

Satyaraj Pantham: Pure JFC 2D Graphics and Imaging, Sams Publishing buy book buy book buy book , get the source code here I like this book, probably because of simple explanations, simple and excellently explained code, good layout and pictures (black & white but nice). There is useless API with lot of errors, but you will get 384 pages for excellent price.

Jonathan Knudsen: Java 2D Graphics, O'Reilly buy book buy book buy book , get the source code here I have another excellent author books (Learning Java, Cryptography and Lego Mindstorms Robots). Including API in the text made it difficult to read for me. Anyway, its a very good book and only one, witch handles deep with text. If you are doing anything with text, editing, highlighting, bidirectional, this is your book.

Java Swing & AWT

By all the Swing programming I used this tree books

James Elliott, Robert Eckstein, Marc Loy, David Wood, Brian Cole: Java Swing, O'Reilly buy book buy book buy book , get the source code here This and following book are the best I've seen. This book is so profesionally written that it's sometimes hard to read for me.

Matthew Robinson, Pavel Vorobiev: Swing, Manning buy book buy book buy book , get the source code here Also good book, but when I compare this book to the previous one (I bought both), I used the code from this one.

Kim Topley: Core JFC, Prentice Hall buy book buy book buy book , book includes CD, but code is not available online I like this book, e.g. graphic example or code for JTree, its definitely worth to buy (you can get it in used books for unbeatable price), little bit simple and outdated. Prentice Hall books have very high standart.

Java

David Flanagan: Java in a Nutshell, O'Reilly buy book buy book buy book , get the source code here Reference book for Java basic classes. From all Java books I have I use this book most.

David Flanagan: Java Foundation Classes in a Nutshell, O'Reilly buy book buy book buy book , get the source code here Reference book for AWT, events, Swings, graphics and other client stuff.

Ivor Horton: Beginning Java 2, Wrox buy book buy book buy book , get the source code here Good book. Not that you will find professional solutions there, but for somebody like me with bad memory for unimportant things its ideal. It's all there, from collection to JDBC, from XML to java 1.5 features, especially I liked his Sketch program. Enjoy your five pounds and 1512 pages.

Jonathan Knudsen: Learning Java, O'Reilly buy book buy book buy book , get the source code here This book is written in a popular way, so its easy to read and you can get the idea about the topic. If I don't look for professional solution and don't know much about topic, I grab this book, as I will not be bored by reading.

Test Driven Development

These books convinced me to use and believe in TDD. I own them much more then I paid. They changed my way of working from struggling to fun.

Martin Fowler, Kent Beck, John Brant, William Opdyke, Don Roberts: Refactoring: Improving the design of existing code, Addison-Wesley buy book buy book buy book , see the sample chapter here Hard cover, clearly laid chapters, real life code, not only clear step by step explanations, but also nice graphs. This book made me to use TDD and gave me confidence by my programming.

Kent Beck: Test Driven Development: By Example, Addison-Wesley buy book buy book buy book Classic book for TDD. Very clearly written, was my first book in TDD.

Johannes Link: Unit Testing in Java: How Tests drive the Code, Morgan Kaufmann, 325 pages buy book buy book buy book When I needed some solution to a problem, I very often grabbed this book. It fits my way of working, I can quickly find what I need and it's not necessary to read whole book.

J.B.Rainsberger: JUnit Recipes, Manning, 752 pages buy book buy book buy book Excellent book. Covers not only JUnit and extensions, but gives recipes for testing from XML, beans, databases up to web components and patterns. Practical advice, that's what you get, if you are working on the professional level, you have to read this book.

David Astels: Test Driven Development: A Practical Guide, Prentice Hall PTR, 592 pages buy book buy book buy book Book completely oriented to TDD in GUI development. This is the way, how GUI should be developed, step by step an application GUI is developed. Real code, real problems.

Andy Hunt, Dave Thomas: Pragmatic Unit Testing in Java with JUnit , The Pragmatic Programmers, 176 pages buy book buy book buy book Small but surprisingly packed with basic essential info about TDD and JUnit. Excellent entry point.

James W. Newkirk, Robert C. Martin: Extreme Programming in Practice, Addison-Wesley Professional, 224 pages buy book buy book buy book One of the few books where I followed all the code and examples on my computer. I like not only the code and test examples, but the story behind. If you were not convinced to use TDD by Kent Beck's book, you should read this one. Unfortunately the code is not available online and xml are missing, but its perfect intro to tdd for less then one dollar (current US price on Amazon).

Software

Drawing Applications

Java

Java, Java Advanced Imaging, Batik Java SVG Toolkit, Java applet demo (takes time to load, by its worth, shows Java 2D capabilities)

SVG

SVG, Adobe SVG plug-in