Java Development

[#1]

Over the weekend I have made the time to read two Blackberry Development books that were published this month, as far as I know, these are the only books on the subject currently in print.

The first one I read was BlackBerry Development Fundamentals, by John Wargo.  I would like to point out, that I bought my own copy (from Amazon UK) and I do not know the author. 

From the web site, and from the contents, it is clear this book is not focused on helping developers write Java or Web code directly, it is focused on helping the developer understand the platform they are developing on.  This is a great objective, as the web site says:

A developer must have a thorough understanding of the features, capabilities and even limitations of a platform in order to build useful, effective and efficient applications.

(Actually that is not quite what the web site says; I’ve taken the liberty of fixing a typo!)

And I think this book does a pretty good job of doing just that.  The only areas not covered as well as I would like are OS 5.0 and Widgets, both are a problem of timing since the book was published at around the same time as these were announced or become readily available. 

Given this focus, the book is great preparation (Widgets and OS 5.0 aside) for the BCP-810 certification exam, (which is the first step to becoming a BlackBerry Certified Application Developer, find out more about this program here: http://na.blackberry.com/eng/support/programs/certification.jsp#application). 

In addition, I suspect that a significant proportion of the questions asked on this forum, including some of the more complicated ones such as those related to networking, would be answered if everyone read this book before asking the question.

For these two reasons alone, I recommend that you buy this book. 

But do not buy it expecting to instantly improve your BlackBerry Java skills.  It won’t.  It is not intended to. 

You can find out more about this book here:

http://www.bbdevfundamentals.com/

There is a review of the book here:

http://www.berryreview.com/2009/11/03/review-blackberry-development-fundamentals-book-by-john-m-warg...

And if John could add additional material on the Web Site to cover OS 5.0, Widgets and installation of Eclipse using the 1.1 Beta plug-in; that would be perfect. 

PS. Notes regarding the other book I read can be found here:

http://supportforums.blackberry.com/t5/Java-Development/Beginning-BlackBerry-Development-by-Anthony-...

[#2]

i just ordered it for our company. Even if i don't find too much new information in it i guess it will be a good thing to have, just to look things up, give another developer to read in the commute train or just to have it around.

I pretty much liked the fact that John Wargo offered quite some stuff on his website, and he seems like a competent and nice person when he shows up here on the board.

I'll add some own review once i have read the book, thanks at Peter for the information that it was released.

[#3]

Peter,

Thank you so much for the great review. Yes, I'd planned in including information on BlackBerry Device Software 5.0 and Widgets, but the book was actually finished and off to the publisher in early July, too early to have complete information on either topics. At the time I had a great sample application available to use for the book, but the tools were not even in beta at the time.

I will be beginning a series of articles on widgets and the new capabilities in Device Software 5.0 soon - watch the site for updates.

[#4]

Simon,

Thank you for your comments!