Customer Reviews

Java How to Program, 2nd Edition

5 star:		(36)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(23)

 

 

The Deitels may be fast at turning out books, but at least for this one, they didn't bother to gain any mastery of Java first. A good programmer will become worse by reading this book, and an average or poor programmer won't be helped much. Fortunately, it looks like there are many programmers who have decided to discard this book, so perhaps the damage won't be so bad.

I was forced to use this textbook for a course I taught at the local community college. In the course evaluation, all 16 students said that the textbook did not help them. There are lots of other EXCELLENT Java books out there that you shouldn't waste your time with this one.

And if you are deciding whether or not to use this book in a classroom, it only covers the 1.1 version of the JDK, which holds back your students from recent improvements in the Java2 (JDK1.2) platform.

I love Deitel&Deitel's other How-To-Program books, but they've tarnished their image by releasing this book and not updating it over the last 2.5 years...

I've read with interest many of the comments about the strengths and weaknesses of this book, and I agree with all of them !

What many writers appear to overlook is that this is intended as a textbook. It's written to be used as part of learning with the help of an experienced person providing training in an introduction to Java, not as a standalone reference. The examples are not intended to be used without help from an instructor and therefore need not be complete and can indeed refer to material not yet covered in the text.

I have used the second edition of the book as a main text in a college corse I teach. For this purpose it is easily the best Java book I have seen. The examples are numerous and vary not only in topic but in complexity - the student can choose his or her own level. The example code actually works, which is not the case with many Java books these days. The line-by-line descriptions of the examples are very helpful to students. All fundamental areas of the language are covered with hands-on assignments provided by the authors.

The other really interesting thing about this book is that is offers more detail about each topic than the reader needs to 'make it work'. I learned a few things about the language myself while using the textbook - for instance, the fact that Java throws an exception if the variable in a switch statement is out of range for the data type used. This turned out to be useful when I earned my Java 2 certification. As a student, I like that sort of text - I can learn more than the minimum if I am really interested.

Many people, but not all, would be able to use this book standalone. But you have to know that it's meant to be used as a basic introduction to Java syntax and have those expectations ! Used that way, I would strongly recommend it to anyone.

I agree with comments that suggest the text is not a good reference for learning OO design. But in my experience there are few really useful OO design references in existence ! Personally I think that expecting a person to learn OO design and a new programming language at the same time is a too much to ask and underestimates the difficulty of understanding OO principles and techniques. I would teach the text first and a course in OO design, including patterns, later. In my opinion the syntax used to express design must be mastered first to avoid confusion of design with a particular language.

...of whether or not you are going to naturally grasp the fundamentals of programming and OOP. If the answer is no, then it is not the books fault. I doesn't discredit your intelligence, it just means that you're going to have to do a bit more ground work to get going.

Admittedly, I had taken some previous course work in Pascal and C, so understanding of the basics such as flow control, functions ( or methods), and libraries ( or classes ), was not exactly new to me. However, on topics such as OOP, and threading I was a green as the dollar bills that book has put me on the path to making. So to be absolutely fair, if I were a complete novice, I'm not exactly sure of how I would have felt about this book. That being said, this is easily the best Intro programming book that I have come across and after completing it, and with dedication, you will be well on your to being a true programmer.

After this book, you'll still need more material on JavaBeans, RMI, a more thorough understanding of data structures and algorithms, and I'm sure an endless array of new classes and libraries, but continually learning new additions and new languages is the life of a professional programmer.

To those who who find this book to be cryptic, I would definitely recommend coming back to it after you have grasp the very basics to what programming is all about, and then I guarantee you will be able to see this book in its true light. I found Deitel & Deitel's writing style to be humorous and exciting. The tips on good programming habits and common errors that are listed in the book should veiwed as the tenets of professional programming.

Finally, after I have mastered a good portion of what is in this book, I continually find myself coming back to it a reference, though there are other books such as Java in Nutshell which in some respects may serve as better reference guide to the specific detials of Java.

I'll give it 4 stars instead of 5 because there were a few typo's in the edition that I read that for the non-careful reader could really throw a newbie off. I trust that these will be rectified in future editions. Nevertheless, hands done, this book is well worth the money. Oh, and for your information, I have no association with Deitel and Deitel in any way and normally would not waste my time typing up a review. However, this book is so damn good, and the review by others have help me on other great purchases that I felt I had to give a little back.

Java How to Program is a great text for the experienced C++ programmer. In fact it seems to be a rewritten version of C++ How to Program. The book is reasonably comprehensive. Four stars for content, including swing. It is a must for the experienced programmer determined to learn Java.

However, this book is quite complex and challenging for the beginning programmer. One must read the text once just to get a basic understanding of Java, and then read it again to fully comprehend it.

Begining Java students SHOULD read this book, but I would recommend that they try a more user friendly introductory text first. Perhaps one of Chapman's, or Bishop and Bishop's texts would be good.

quite frankly, this book is not well suited to those first learn programming or those who already know programming. It does not teach you how to program at all. Everything seems to be done in applets and is also a poor reference manual for those you do know how to program

This book is schizophrenic. The authors can't decide if it's for beginners or advanced. In the end its for neither. They go into great detail on some very simple topics and gloss over the complicated.

My other major complaint is with the book's examples. Every example is an "opportunity" to review every concept introduced so far and a few that haven't been covered yet. For example, in the chapter on files, the author's example for reading from a file is a half dozen pages long. It's just not that hard! But you have to pick thru several hundred lines of GUI code to find the subject of the example. By using features that haven't been covered yet you will supposedly become familiar with them. Instead there is rarely an example that you can understand.

I did lean java, despite this book.

When I started studying this book I had very little experience in programming. The little experience I had was with Basic, so the idea of objects, polymorphism or even of passing arguments with method calls was all new to me. I had tried studying on my own with several books but had progressed little. I had become very frustrated with my lack of understanding in Java. A prior reader from Belgium summed up, concisely how I felt:

"In other books I read the authors clearly rather not mentioned things they thought were too complicated for the ignorant reader. The result was that I accumulated ignorance rather than knowledge, and had to quit halfway through the book because I felt I did not know what I was doing and why." jbollen@vub.ac.be from Brussels, Belgium , May 20, 1998

This was my experience with several books that I tried to study from (for example, Java Programming for Dummies, Java in 21 Days and Java by Example).

This book has helped me, a beginner, who has been willing to work hard, gain a deeper understanding of programming with Java. It was a good first step. At least it has been the best first step that I could find. I'm now ready to go on to more advanced books that focus more on object-orientated programming and good design techniques.

The combination of presenting new concepts in working programs and in most cases of giving detailed explanations of the code helped clarify concepts that I didn't fully get before. For example, the difference between an instance variable and a local variable. The program Scoping.java (on page 192, in chapter 4 methods) might seem trivial once you understand the difference, but yet none of the prior books that I encountered showed an example that made the difference clear.

The chapters on methods, arrays and object-orientated programming were very good and helped me get started. The chapters on GUI components were exhausting but, good especially for the details on the event listeners: you learned the event listeners as you learned the different GUI components.

The reason that I don't give a 5 star rating is because of the latter chapters of the book. The networking chapter was somewhat disappointing, for example. A couple of the example programs, (including the TicTacToe example where 2 people over the Internet hook up to a server and play against one another) would not run because of security features that browsers have in relation to applets. At the end of the chapter the reader was referred to an upcoming book "Advanced Java How to Program" to learn about these security features.

It worked out O.K, nevertheless, because it was pretty easy to change the program using Frames instead of Applets, and in this way it was able to run. However, I had to read the beginning of the networking chapter in "Thinking in Java" to get through this chapter here. I don't know enough about networking to judge well, but it's apparent that a lot was left out. For example, if you have a server and 2 or more clients and one of the clients disconnects, it was not a simple matter in the TicTacToe example to change the settings in the code to accept a new client. No help was given in this area.

It was still valuable experience to work through these latter chapters, in order to get some exposure to these more complex topics, like multithreading and data structures. These chapters were meant to be an introduction, but they could have gone deeper into these topics. Especially the Files and Streams and Networking chapters.

All in all, Java How to Program 2nd edition helped me take my first step in Java, but after taking the step I still wasn't finished with the book yet: I spent the rest of the book mostly walking in place. No one book can cover everything: while I was studying the second half of the book I started to study Bruce Eckel's "Thinking in Java" as a supplement and now that I've finished the Deitel's book I can dedicate more time to the former.

Thinking in Java is deeper and has a wider range as it goes from clarifying the differences between the object in memory and the handle that refers to the object to an introduction to Design patterns. I've only read the first 6 chapters so far, but it's already made clear many things that the Deitel book mentions but doesn't clarify as well.

I should say though that before I read the Deitel's book, I wasn't able to follow very well the Thinking in Java book. But after, reading the first half of the Deitel book, Eckel's book was not only more understandable but also a relief. This only goes to show that the learning process is to a large extent a subjective thing: what works for me at this point in time might not work for others.

For sure though, when you're studying this book, or any Java book, I suggest of course using as a supplement the online API documentation and consider the book The Java Class Libraries written by the Sun team. The examples, in the class libraries book are not great, but the class descriptions are pretty good and which helped me understand better the code in the Multithreading, File and Stream and Networking chapters.

Bad bad book...... I "had" to spend $58 on this junk as it was required by the College I was learning Java at. I dropped out the course because, the book, coupled with the Instructor referencing the book, made Java look absolutely impossible.

"How to Program" implies, we can help you learn this stuff. Well, in this case it isn't true. As a novice at anything, you need in-depth explanations, you just don't get them here. Also, as a novice, you need examples that are "precise", well layed out, easy to follow and explained step by step. I honestly wouldn't recommend this title to anyone ......

I'm sorry to be so negative but, I HAD to buy this book and I'm pretty angry that the college I was at didn't do an in-depth review of this book themselves.

OPEN NOTE to AMAZON: You really need a 0 (ZERO) star option here.

I found the layout of this book very helpful. Especially the Software Engineering Observations, Good Programming Practices and Common Programming Errors that are sprinkled through the text do a good job in summarizing and highlighting important ideas. I have only highlighted very few words or fragments, most of it is already done for you! It is not always an easy read, granted, and I went back to it again and again, but I found the material very solid and I think I have learned a lot on Java and Object Oriented Programming. It isn't my only book on Java, but it was my first one. It was also my first programming book.