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Java closures and lambda
Fischer R., Apress, Berkeley, CA, 2015. 220 pp. Type: Book (978-1-430259-98-5)
Date Reviewed: Jul 10 2015

Java 8 is well recognized as the most significant change to Java since its beginning. More than the typical features, upgrades, and updates, it adds a new set of semantic features to the language, enabling some additional functional programming attributes.

All Java users should be up to date on these changes--not only the new features related to functional programming of lambdas and closures, but also the best way to adapt usage and programming style to use these features in an idiomatic manner in the imperative Java language; that is the ultimate goal of this book.

This concise book gives a good introduction to and overview of these new features, and provides plenty of code examples to make the usage and application of them more concrete. The book includes a lot of code (more than half of the text), so be prepared to work through the examples. Several database examples are developed in order to be more realistic and to show broader Java applications.

This addition of some functional features of lambdas and streams makes Java more flexible. The new features related to lambdas and their integration with libraries and streams make this change a significant one, and this book gives a good introduction to both the new features and their usage.

One issue I would note is that the author confuses Java lambdas with closures, which they are not. Lambdas are a new method to accomplish what was previously done using inner-blocks, but have differences in actual usage details and in implementation.

I would prefer a simpler set of introductory examples with less usage of generics and new library types, but I think the author intends to give real-world examples even from the beginning. There are several references to features and approaches in other languages, which I think are not really useful except for a few polyglot readers.

This book spends less time on the overview of basic features and usage than others, and then goes on to spend the majority of the text on more detailed examples of usage in input/output (I/O), databases, and threads.

These new, important, and valuable additions to Java are interrelated and complex enough that they need a good introduction, and this book is one of a number now available; however, I found others [1,2,3] to be more accessible and better organized.

More reviews about this item: Amazon

Reviewer:  G. R. Guthrie Review #: CR143597 (1510-0851)
1) Horstman, C. Java SE 8 for the really impatient. Addison Wesley, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2014.
2) Naftalin, M. Mastering lambdas: Java programming in a multicore world. Oracle Press, New York, NY, 2015.
3) Urma, R.; Fusco, M.; Mycroft, A. Java 8 in action. Manning, Shelter Island, NY, 2015.
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