java

This book does not belong with other Java books. This is a real computer science textbook that should be sitting next to Rivest's Algorithms book. The use of Java is incidental and makes the book very accessible without detracting from the issues at hand. It has to be one of the most well conceived computer science books ever written.

The material covered is maddeningly difficult to master informally because concurrency errors often manifest themselves as rare, random, and disastrous events that cannot be reproduced. Most of the book is laying down a solid formal foundation in which to reason about concurrency; the only hope for getting it right when things are difficult. It also comes with analysis tools (in Java of course!) to help people who learn by exploration, experimentation, and visualisation.

It was only after reading that book that I was able to really understand the conecepts of interleaved actions, race conditions, semaphores and monitors (as well as other concurrency-related issues). As a newcomer to IT generally, reading this book enabled me to understand better the Operating Systems course at Imperial College. I think the reading of this book should precede any approach to a course on operating systems. As a final note, Jeff Kramer is one of the most popular lecturers at the department of computing of Imperial College. Many other studens I spoke too were convinced that his teaching was by far the most efficient. I strongly recommend the book! I still use it at work as an ever useful reference.

I have also used this book in manuscript form for two years at the University of Pretoria, South Africa, and am now using it in Victoria, Canada. In both cases, the book forms the introductory part to a larger course on object-oriented distributed systems.

Without this book the students would be lost in the mire of COM, RMI, CORBA etc and learn no principles to carry them through after graduation. Magee and Kramer package up the classical Hoare CSP in such a way that it is palatable, easy to use, and really illustrates difficult points to students on-line. Students say the course is fun. It is fitting that this book should appear just as Tony Hoare retires from Oxford. Magee and Kramer show how concurrency should be done in the new millenium.

Just one word of warning: there are five notations to master in the book: FSP modelling, LTS diagrams, UML diagrams, structure diagrams and Java. I found that being forewarned on this aspect helped me explain the need for all of them to students.