Somebody below me said the book is a great introductory book as far as the future of Java is concerned.This book is indeed an introduction. But, if you REALLY want an introductory book, you should go for other books from Wiley - a book written by Orfali, for example. They're a magnitude better than this one.
I'v read Orfali's most books and am pretty happy with them - his Distributed Objects Survival Guide is the best intro book on CORBA I've ever read. Also, Peter van den Linden's Not just Java is also a good introductory book to most topics covered in Nelson's book - except for the vendor-specific subjects, of course - voyagee (sp?) et al. But they only take up some 70-80 pages. The other 530-540 pages are just plain bad - just compare this book to those of Orfali...
Do NOT buy this book.
I like the book, althu it's a bit outdated (it went to print this January but contains really outdated stuff - no Java 2 features - the author only mentions very early betas, sore remarks only discuss the situation in late 1997 etc.) and FAR too verbose. It discusses trivial things and ideas in 2-3 pages. I've read much better books that discussed the same ideas in 5-6 rows as comprehensively as this one.The book's title is a bit misleading - it has nothing to do with mobile agents at all (some 5 pages are dedicated to agents). So, if you're looking for a book on agents, go for something else. (Fortunately, the author explicitly tells this in his review above; unfortunately, Wiley's book catalogue in July 1998, when I ordered the book, didn't mention this. But it doesn't matter - after all, I've learnt a lot from the book).
The book contains several typos (e.g. pp. 222: discuss <> Task; its = it's; in the examples too - e.g. pp. 59 wrong constructor names), 64 (resume() in readExternal), 66. (the same)), and sometimes serious mistakes (e.g. pp. 210: 'Applets cannot be distributed to IE browsers located accross the Internet using this technique [locally making CLASSPATH point to 1.1's LOCAL classes.zip in order to make 1.02-compliant, old IE's 1.1-compilant] because the JDK 1.1 class file cannot be placed on a web site for two reasons. First, the JDK 1.1 class file is licensed from JavaSoft and can't be redistributed without permission. Second, the JDK 1.1 class file is larger than 8 megabytes, which is impractical to distribute accross the Internet for applets.' - it doesnt say a word about using REMOTE java.* classes and ClassLoader's refusing to load them. It is indeed a very severe error.
Class/method/etc names / keywords arent highlighted, unfortunately, in the text.
The book could be MUCH better - the author should have updated the menuscript to discuss Java2 (Wiley announced the book last summer, but the book actually went into press this year so he DID have time!) and should have read it to eliminate the errors / make it a bit more informative and less verbose.
Still, I recommend the book - it discusses things that were completely new for me. If you want to get ALL books on hot technology, get this one, too (after getting Orfali's books from Wiley, of course). If you just want something more accurate, go elsewhere. The 2nd edition should be made a LOT more accurate, with more diagrams, highlighted code etc.
