Rating: 
Summary: All meat, no potatos...
Review: A book like this is overdue. It fills the gap between dry academic books on concurrency and light-weight books that just repeat the spec. The book is directed at experienced java programmers who want to do threads the right way. It addresses how to solve classic deadlock and synchronization problems with extremely practical java code and techniques. This book is clearly written and it contains lots of well documented code. If you write threaded code, you should get this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Almost political..
Review: After reading 1/4th of this book, I felt a sudden urge to review it here. This book is no doubt a good book about thread programming, but it irritates me to read Mr. Holub's constantly oppininated remarks. He has a strong dislike of Microsoft and Windows, and you will hear for it! Then he starts to discuss that he don't like theJavaConventionOfFieldNames, that he thinks that_underscores_are_much_better_approach. Finally, and probably the most annoying factor is that he puts the same annoying copyright comment in all his code listings, instead of putting them in the first page of the book or something. Notice that I don't penalize the stars on my review very much, because I haven't read the entire book yet.
Rating:
Summary: Response from the Author to Craig Patchett's Review
Review: Craig is correct in that I'll let anyone use the code in exchange for a mention in your about box. if the about-box terms aren't to your liking, I'll also happily licence it for corporate use for a licencing fee. There's no fee for personal use, of course. It seemed like getting credit for my work wasn't much to ask for in exchange for free use of the code. Craig never wrote to me asking if this was the only option, however.Please don't use this response as an excuse for starting a discussion about whether or not computer software should be free. I did think that the whole story should be printed, though. -AIH
Rating: 
Summary: You can't use the code unless you advertise the book
Review: Don't get me wrong, this is a terrific book packed full of useful information and code to match. But Holub has not put the code in the public domain and if you use any code out of the book it must be accompanied by what amounts to an advertisement for the book in your program's About box. While this may be marginally acceptable for shareware developers, it kills the usefulness of the book in corporate development environments. If Holub removed this restriction I'd give the book 5 stars.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: Great treatment of Java threads. Not a rehash of the API, but actual useful information on how to use threads to do work. I particularly like the object-oriented perspective of the examples. As one reviewer complains, the code is not in the public domain, but if you buy this book for the code, you're shortchanging yourself. There's much to learn here. Holub does a great job of explaining threads, locking, and their use in an object-oriented system.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: Great treatment of Java threads. Not a rehash of the API, but actual useful information on how to use threads to do work. I particularly like the object-oriented perspective of the examples. As one reviewer complains, the code is not in the public domain, but if you buy this book for the code, you're shortchanging yourself. There's much to learn here. Holub does a great job of explaining threads, locking, and their use in an object-oriented system.
Rating: 
Summary: possibly the worst book on computer programming I ever read
Review: Mr Holub doesn't stop a second before starting to attack everything in Java.
He doesn't like the class and method naming conventions and therefore completely ignores them throughout the book.
He doesn't agree with the way Sun decided Threads should work in Java so he sets out to rewrite the entire system from scratch (or at least wrap it in something he does like).
He seems to hate Microsoft with a vengeance and as a result doesn't stop telling how at every point they did wrong implementing multithreading in Windows.
In fact, once you get past those things there's precious little left.
Rating:
Summary: Absolutely enlightening.
Review: Nearly a decade ago I had read Alan's 'Compiler Design in C' book, which was a surreal experience in learning from someone's self evident mastery of putting theory to practice. Taming Java Threads does the same for me. There is no other book (I repeat) on the market, on the topic of multithreaded programming in Java, which is as succinct, incisive and authoritative. A LOT MANY MORE people should be following his advise, than actually do. Be warned that the writing style and level of discussion essentially assume that you do have a fair flair for all things Java and Object-Oriented. (Also, from years of suffering sustained abuse, I have become impervious to the opinionated, ideosynchratic approaches of authors living in or near Berkeley, CA. Your digestion may vary. OTOH, I do like authors who pick a problem and systematically club it to death!) My only lament? (;-)) Life would be a lot easier for many of us, if those repetitive copyright statements did not exist. Purely on the merit of his serious contribution here, I am refraining from rating this book based upon my deep disagreemt with his sentiment in this regard. Frankly, I wonder what I would be able to do, or not, if many other books in my book shelf had taken the same approach. Remove them in the 2nd edition, please. Typesetting is very bland. (Hey, pick up some TeX, Alan!) -a
Rating:
Summary: Great guide to "taming" threads
Review: Of all the topics a programmer learns, it's been my experience that the two most complex topics are recursion, and multi-threading. Both require a different way of thinking about software, very much out-of-the-box thinking. So if threads are getting you down, Taming Java Threads is the book for you. In Taming Java Threads, you'll learn how threads work, by examining practical applications that demonstrate key topics and which are backed up by theory. You'll learn about topics like mutex and lock management, timer threads, synchronization, and thread pools. The range of topics will interest both a beginner and an expert. But to my mind, the most important topic was GUIs and threads. Older books on threads completely neglect topics like GUI design and Swing -- yet as Allen Holub shows in Taming Java Threads, threads are essential to the Swing event-dispatch queue, and a knowledge of threads is required to prevent unresponsive GUIs. The important information contained within these chapters should be required reading for Java developers. Without it, you'll write applications that can stall and freeze. Taming Java Threads is a great guide to thread programming. If there is one flaw in the book I detected, it was that it failed to cover non-blocking I/O as an alternative to threads. Whether you've just learning Java programming, or you want to hone up on your thread theory, this is the book for you. -- David Reilly for the Java Coffee Break
Rating:
Summary: Great guide to "taming" threads
Review: Of all the topics a programmer learns, it's been my experience that the two most complex topics are recursion, and multi-threading. Both require a different way of thinking about software, very much out-of-the-box thinking. So if threads are getting you down, Taming Java Threads is the book for you. In Taming Java Threads, you'll learn how threads work, by examining practical applications that demonstrate key topics and which are backed up by theory. You'll learn about topics like mutex and lock management, timer threads, synchronization, and thread pools. The range of topics will interest both a beginner and an expert. But to my mind, the most important topic was GUIs and threads. Older books on threads completely neglect topics like GUI design and Swing -- yet as Allen Holub shows in Taming Java Threads, threads are essential to the Swing event-dispatch queue, and a knowledge of threads is required to prevent unresponsive GUIs. The important information contained within these chapters should be required reading for Java developers. Without it, you'll write applications that can stall and freeze. Taming Java Threads is a great guide to thread programming. If there is one flaw in the book I detected, it was that it failed to cover non-blocking I/O as an alternative to threads. Whether you've just learning Java programming, or you want to hone up on your thread theory, this is the book for you. -- David Reilly for the Java Coffee Break
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