I received an email through the virtual Java User Group highlighting the availability of a couple of eBooks around Java published by O’Reilly. The details are below. The books are more booklets (nothing wrong with that). The key difference being that they are shorter and focused on one or two focused subjects (in this case Java 8’s Lambda’s & Streams) which is great because I don’t want a whole Java book again, I just want to get a handle on the key changes and language innovations. It is worth highlighting that these aren’t just ‘free chapters’ which is what you see happen sometimes as the goal of the book is described, doesn’t depend on prior chapters to work the illustrated material and structured with the appropriate cover material contents, index etc so works as a discrete entity.

This approach seems to be coming more common at O’Reilly at least as a marketing device, and we have seen this being done with the Dummies brand where the booklets have then been printed as conference give aways.

Some may argue that this is a reflection of our ever shortening attention span with books. This maybe the case for some, but I suspect it is more about providing some that is more digestible than a ‘free chapter’, but more importantly reflects the recognition that for books that are providing guides (as opposed to reference books – which I’d include patterns books) people don’t want to buy a latest edition of a book where the 1st chapters are exactly the same as the previous edition of the book and that the only significant change is a new section on Lambdas for example.

Any way the latest book details received are:

Introducing Java 8

by Raoul-Gabriel Urma

Offers a practical tutorial to some of the core Java 8 features and gets you programming quickly with Java 8.

Object Oriented vs Functional Programming

by Richard Warburton

Explains the similarities and differences between functional programming and object oriented programming with Java focused examples.

http://insightfullogic.com
@RichardWarburto

The other book(lets) that have drawn my attention to the trend include:

• Static Site Generators
• Migrating to Cloud-Native Application Architectures
• Software Architecture Patterns
• Little Book of HTML/CSS Coding Guidelines
• Java the Legend – history of Java
• Designing Great Web APIs
• Modern Java Script
• Hadoop with Python
• Release Engineering How Google Builds and Delivers Software
• Functional Programming in Python
• 20 Python Libraries You Aren’t Using (But Should)
• Monitoring Distributed Systems
• Little Book of HTML/CSS Frameworks

In addition to these Book(let)s O’Reilly offer a range of ‘reports’ such as:

• Mapping Big Data, Evaluating Machine Learning Models, Data Driven  (the full range can be seen at Free Data Reports)
• Open by Design
• Design for Voice Interfaces (Siri, Cortana etc)

In addition O’Reilly have a page on ‘Open Books’ (here) – covering significant texts O’Reilly have had some involvement in but published under licenses such as Create Commons.

• [18-01-16 Update] New booklet added for Modern Java Script
• [13-03-16 Update] New booklet Continuous Delivery With Windows and Dot Net
• [14-03-16 Update] New booklet Modern Java EE Design Patterns
• [13-08-16 Update] New booklet Release Engineering How Google Builds and Delivers Software and Functional Programming in Python
• [16-09-16 Update] new booklet
  • 20 Python Libraries You Aren’t Using (But Should)
• [19-09-16 Update] New Booklet Monitoring Distributed Systems
• [28-09-16]New Booklet Little Book of HTML/CSS Frameworks