This book covers writing distributed applications in Java. A good foundation in the Java language itself, i.e., its syntax and structure, is assumed throughout the book. Thorough knowledge of the Java API is less important, since many of the core Java APIs are discussed in the early chapters, from the standpoint of their support for distributed applications.
Since Java is an object-oriented language, it's only natural that some of the discussion in the book will involve concepts like classes, interfaces, instances, inheritance, and methods; therefore, a decent understanding of these will help. At times we also touch on some object-oriented design concepts, like using abstract interfaces to provide implementation-independent APIs, but these discussions are pretty limited and the concepts are laid out fairly well. I've tried to keep these such that you don't need to be deeply entrenched in object-oriented jargon to follow the discussion.
Throughout the book I assume that you are motivated to build or expand on your understanding of distributed application development in Java. Whether you're a Java developer looking to branch out into distributed systems, or a distributed systems developer looking to apply your experience in a Java environment, you should find this book a practical, and hopefully enjoyable, guide during your explorations, and a useful reference while you're in the thick of developing remote computing applications.
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| 0.1. What Does This Book Cover? |  | 0.3. About the Source Code |
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