Years ago, I designed a “refcard” for DZone that tried to cram all of Java into eight pages. Now a Java 8 update is available, thanks to Bulgarian JUG leader Ivan St. Ivanov. Check it out!
DZone publishes a set of “refcards”, PDF files that can be printed on 2, 4 or 8 pages with all the essentials of a particular topic. Way back when, they asked me to do a card for JSF, and that seemed like a good idea because I was using it at the time and could never remember this or that fiddly detail.
Then I offered to do the Java refcard, mostly so that Herb Schildt wouldn't beat me to it. I had a tough time selecting what to put on those 8 pages. In the end, much of was a personal choice and a record of my own forgetfulness: regex syntax, printf flags, jar command options.
Now, Ivan St. Ivanov has updated the refcard for Java 8. (NB. I don't know whether the St. means he is a holy man, or whether his middle name is Stephan, just like mine. I just met him briefly at Java One, and he wasn't wearing a monk's habit.)
Of course, he added material about lambdas and streams. And it's now 9 pages long—whatever happened to the “powers of 2” requirement? Maybe that constraint wasn't bad, actually. There were a couple of things that one could have taken away. (NB. One of my university colleagues who used to consult for an aircraft company gave me this wonderful quote: “The trouble with interns is that they only add code—they never take any away!”)
Check it out! It's at https://dzone.com/refcardz/core-java.
