Java for Programmers (2nd Edition) Book Review

I have had several Deitel books in the past and I would say my biggest disappointment with this one was finding out that there were no Deitel bugs to find on the cover. I have not had a Deitel book for a while and really enjoyed having one back in my hands. If you have never owned a Deitel book, you owe it to yourself to get one sometime. If you are a Java developer, or want to be a Java developer, I would recommend starting with this one. I am from the .NET camp and I am doing my best to go all out learning Java. This book has definitely helped with that goal. This book covers a ton of information. Some of the topics covered Classes, Objects, Methods, Strings, Control Statements, Arrays, ArrayLists, Object-Oriented Programming, Exception Handling, GUI Components, Graphics, Java 2D, Regular Expressions, File Serialization, Streams, Object Serialization, Generic Collections, Generic Classes, Generic Methods, Applets, Java Web Start, Multithreading, Networking, Accessing Databases with JDBC, JavaServer Faces, Web Services, and UML. This book is for the advanced programmer as well as the person new to programming. It teaches a lot of the basics and does a great job of introducing Object-Oriented Programming. There are a ton of code samples and diagrams to help explain the topics. They did a really good job explaining potentially confusing topics like multithreading, streams, and generics. The downloadable code is great. All the samples in the book are organized very well and all the code is usable. There are also several full case study projects included. I like that the book uses the NetBeans IDE with its examples. I had not used the NetBeans IDE that much and found it to be pretty sweet. Another thing I like about the book is the sidebars. They have several different types throughout the book. They include Good Programming Practice, Common Programming Error, Error-Prevention Tip, Performance Tip, Portability Tip, Software Engineering Observation, and Look-and-Feel Observation. They help to point out the important takeaways in a given section. If you take the time to read this book from cover to cover, you will definitely learn the ins and outs of Java SE 7. The authors writing style makes it a nice cover to cover read, but they also did a great job of making it a nice reference. They did a really good job on the index, which is not the case with a lot of books coming out today. All in all I highly recommend this book as a learning resource for Java.  It covers a ton of topics and covers them in detail with plenty of examples.  I would expect to find this in any good Java programmer's library.

Java™ for Programmers (2nd Edition) (Deitel Developer Series)