Java: How to Program [Import] [Paperback]

Harvey M. Deitel (Author), Paul J. Deitel (Author), Paul J. Deital (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 800 pages
• Publisher: Pearson US Imports & PHIPEs (September 6, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0132634015
• ISBN-13: 978-0132634014
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (94 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,739,481 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Promotes bad programming and bad programmers, August 23, 1999

By 

Peter Norvig (Palo Alto, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Java How to Program, 2nd Edition (Paperback)

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.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Out of Date and Overpriced - January 2000, January 19, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Java How to Program, 2nd Edition (Paperback)

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...

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent TEXTBOOK - not standalone volume, December 22, 1999

By 

Ethan Allen - See all my reviews

This review is from: Java How to Program, 2nd Edition (Paperback)

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.