Cay Horstmann's Home Page

Welcome to Cay Horstmann's Home Page!

I grew up in Northern Germany and attended the Christian-Albrechts-Universität in Kiel , a harbor town at the Baltic sea. I received a M.S. in computer science from Syracuse University , and a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. I now teach computer science at San Jose State University . In my copious spare time I write books and articles on Java and consult on internet programming. Click here for a copy of my resume .

My Java blog

SJSU Students: Please go to my SJSU course page.

Fellow Horstmanns who are interested in the family genealogy may want to turn to Bernhard Horstmann's site http://www.family-horstmann.net.

Books

Memorable Quotes

The March of Progress

1980: C

printf("%10.2f", x);

1988: C++

cout << setw(10) << setprecision(2) << showpoint << x;

1996: Java

java.text.NumberFormat formatter = java.text.NumberFormat.getNumberInstance(); formatter.setMinimumFractionDigits(2); formatter.setMaximumFractionDigits(2); String s = formatter.format(x); for (int i = s.length(); i < 10; i++) System.out.print(' '); System.out.print(s);

2004: Java

System.out.printf("%10.2f", x);

2008: Scala and Groovy

printf("%10.2f", x)

(Thanks to Will Iverson for the update. He writes: “Note the lack of semi-colon. Improvement!”)

Programming and Software

Tired of coding and reading Java getters and setters? My graduate student Alexandre Alves implemented native properties. Like C#, just better. We hope to make this into a feature for Java 7.
Enterprise Java for Elvis
Violet is a free, easy to use UML editor.
Tame the GridBagLayout with a handy helper class.
The new and improved ImportCleaner is a utility to clean up Java import statement sets. (Here is the original article.)
Safe STL is a safe version of the original HP STL implementation. For a modern safe version of STL, check out Boris Fomitchev's STLport .
C++ Pitfalls | Polish translation, thanks to Darek Ostolski
C++ Iostreams
Do you own a Palm Pilot? Are you frequently trapped in boring meetings? Are you a fan of the Great Underground Empire? Download David Turnbulls's Infocom Game Engine for the Palm Pilot and the Zork games from Peter Scheyen's Infocom page, install them onto your Pilot, and make your meetings more productive.
A "lobbying group" for Java with good discussion groups.
I love the AlienCamel spam filtering service. Not having to download and filter through the spam is well worth the money.

Fun Applets

Traffic jam simulator. This is an applet that is fascinating (or depressing, depending on your outlook). It simulates the traffic flow on a freeway and shows how traffic jams are inevitable even at modest loads if too many people don't maintain their speed.
Traffic light simulation. This is an applet that I wrote for David Bellin's CRC book. It simulates traffic signals at an intersection.
Retirement calculator. This applet calculates how much money you will have left for your well-deserved retirement, under various savings scenarios. Another one of those fascinating/depressing applets. From the first edition of Core Java.
Weather report . Get an up-to-date weather report. Also from the first edition of Core Java.