@Jae: No, you won't be misinformed. In fact, that's the BEST book for answering the "why" of the language and its design features and you'll definitely learn something. It's core java so not much has deprecated. I still have a copy and refer to it time and again. Besides the ENTIRE book is online for free bruceeckel.com

@Jae I've read the first edition... But I read it when it was current (yes I'm old). The 3rd edition is now 10 years old, so there's bound to be some deprecated stuff in it.

But as @Nupul already mentioned, the chapters describing the core language shouldn't have changed much.

@YannisRizos @Nupul: But will the rest of the book still be valid? Will it have been changed or just added on to?

@YannisRizos: Or is the core the only solid info?

@WorldEngineer: I'm kinda getting this book really cheap so I'm not really picking the book. Do you guys have to do extra research after learning about a topic, or does the old book teach it well?

@Jae I don't know, I'd have to re-read the book to answer that. Anyways, it's a good book, get it, but when you reach the chapters that aren't about core language features you should verify if the features presented are still relevant. Stack Overflow and Programmers will be your best friends there ;)

@Rachel I almost broke my "+1 comments are useless noise" rule for this answer... +1!

@Rachel @YannisRizos Going by the answer, Rachel would make a really good teacher for the school :)

@Rachel blogs.balsamiq.com/product/2012/02/27/uxstackexchange

Ooooo shiny Balsamiq toys for UX.SE. I made a SE account there just to play with them

@YannisRizos And thanks :) I almost didn't post that because the top answer almost covered it, but not quite so simply. And @psr I think I'd hate to teach >.<

Actually I take it back - I think I'd like to teach providing I know what I'm talking about, and the students aren't dumb :)

@marvinpinto What's the deal with all the flags?

@ChrisF Were they unwarranted? If so, feel free to ignore/decline them, I apologize :)

@MarvinPinto Well I haven't had the time to go through them all - but it's just that flagging one users posts like that could be seen as abusive in the same way that serial down-voting is.

It looks a little odd (to say the least).

I just happened on that user going through some of the old posts on P.SE.

Not targeted by any means :)

OK - as long as you're not deliberately targeting people that's fine. We'll deal with the flags as and when we have the time.

@Rachel @Ubermensch That last reply was directed at me but in response to Ubermensch's comment.

@YannisRizos By any chance are you going on a downvote-spree again?

@Rachel Nope, why?

@YannisRizos hey Yannis

thank you for cleaning up my answer's comment thread

@Rachel I think I only downvoted this answer today... And about 20 posts on MSO, but that doesn't really count...

@DeadMG It was getting nasty... I saw your Meta post... It would be preferable to flag one of the user's post for moderation attention and explain the problem, rather than calling out the user on Meta (but that's completely up to you). You could do a Meta post on the general behaviour instead, without targeting a specific user.

yeah

I deleted that post anyway to reconsider it

the truth is that I'd rather address it in a less public way, but the other truth is that he just keeps coming back for more

this is hardly the first time that our exchanges have had to be explicitly moderated, and it doesn't really seem to have made any difference

I don't want to raise a complaint on Meta targetting a specific user, but I'm also not sure what else to do about it

@DeadMG Well do flag one of his posts for moderation attention, so the whole mod team will take notice - if you really want us to intervene. If not, you could simply ignore him next time.

I will do that, thanks

asdf got to love tech support calls

I got a call from someone saying their software wouldn't open. So I head to their desk and discover it's not opening because an instance of the software is already running!

Although to be fair, it was minimized in the system tray area.....

To be fair, I've caught myself with that before. In all honest that is just crap UX design on the developers side.

If a customer tries to 'run' an application, they obviously expect it to open. If it happens to be already opened in the sys tray, why wouldn't you restore it instead of apparently doing nothing (or worse, bombing out with the ever so friendly Error: xF5D06)

lol I suppose, but they've been using this software for a year or two, I thought they would know how it works by now :)

Now you are just asking too much! Software is like cars, even after 10 years of use it, 75% of users really have no idea...

I kid! [at least on the asking too much part.. ;) ]