Preface to the Second Edition

 

... the pyramid must stand unchanged for a millennium;

the organism must evolve or perish.

 
 --Alan Perlis, Foreword to Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs

OVER the past few years, the Java™ programming language has enjoyed unprecedented success. This success has brought a challenge: along with explosive growth in popularity, there has been explosive growth in the demands made on the language and its libraries. To meet this challenge, the language has grown as well (fortunately, not explosively) and so have the libraries.

This second edition of The Java™ Language Specification reflects these developments. It integrates all the changes made to the Java programming language since the publication of the first ...

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