Book review: Java Puzzlers

Java Puzzlers is a nice book on the corner cases of the Java language, taken as an excuse to explain its inner workings. I have read it over the holidays and I found it a nice refresher over the perils of some of Java's features and types.

What you'll learn

A first example of feature under scrutiny is the casting of primitive types to each other (byte, char int), with the related overflows and unintended loss of precision. Getting to one of these conditions can result in an infinite loop, so it's definitely something you want to be able to debug in case it happens.
There are more esotheric corner cases in the book, such as the moment in which i == i returns false; or the problem of initializations of classes and objects not happening in the order you expect.

Method

I don't want to spoil the book, since it's based on trying to run the examples yourself and propose an explanation for the observed behavior. I'd say this scientific method is very effective in keeping the reader engaged, to the point that I finished it in a few days.
To run the puzzles, you work on self-contained .java files provided by the books website; you can actually compile and run them from the terminal as there are no external dependencies.
Incidentally, this isolation also means you're working on the language and in some cases on the standard library; the knowledge you acquire won't be lost after the next release of an MVC framework.
Again, work on the pc and not on a printed book only; in that case, you won't be able to experiment and you will be forced to read solutions instead of try and solving the puzzles yourself.

Argh, Java!

It's easy to fall into another pitfall: bashing the Java language and its libraries. The authors, however, make clear that the goal of the book is just to explain the corner cases of the platform so that programmers can be more productive. Java has been a tremendously successful platform all over the world, the strange behaviors shown here notwithstanding.
Thus instead of saying This language sucks you can actually think If this happens in my production code I will know what to do. The biggest lesson of the book is to keep the code simple, consistent and readable so that there are no ticking time bombs or hidden, open manholes in a dark and stormy night.

Some sample quotes

Clearly, the author of this program didn’t think about the order in which the initialization of the Cache class would take place. Unable to decide between eager and lazy initialization, the author tried to do both, resulting in a big mess. Use either eager initialization or lazy initialization, never both.

the lesson of Puzzle 6: If you can’t tell what a program does by looking at it, it probably doesn’t do what you want. Strive for clarity.

Whenever the libraries provide a method that does what you need, use it [EJ Item 30]. Generally speaking, the libraries provides high-quality solutions requiring a minimum of effort

Conclusions

Some of these pitfalls may be found through testing; some will only be found when the code is heavily exercised in a production environment; some may remain traps never triggered. Yet, having this knowledge will make you able to understand what's happening in those cases instead of just looking for an unpleasant workaround. This is also a recreational book for programmers, so if you're working with Java get to know it with an easy and fun read.