Review: Simply Java Programming Deitel and Deitel

The first Java course I took, we used a book named Simply Java Programming by the prolific Deitel brothers, published by Pearson (Prentice-Hall). The table of contents shows the following coverage:

Chapter 1 Computers, the Internet and Java Programming.
Chapter 2 Graphical User Interface Programming
Chapter 3 JTextFields and JButton
Chapter 4 Introducing Programming
Chapter 5 Variables, Memory Concepts, Arithmetic and Keyboard Events
Chapter 6 Algorithms, Pseudocode and Program Control
Chapter 7 JCheckBoxes, Message Dialogs and Logical Operators
Chapter 8 while Repetition Statement and JTextAreas
Chapter 9 do...while Repetition Statement
Chapter 10 for Repetition Statement
Chapter 11 switch Multiple-Selection Statements, Date and Date Format
Chapter 12 Methods
Chapter 13 Event Handling
Chapter 14 Scope and Conversion of Primitive Types
Chapter 15 Random Number Generation and the JPanel
Chapter 16 One-Dimensional Arrays and JComboBoxes
Chapter 17 Two-Dimensional Arrays and JRadioButton
Chapter 18 Classes and Objects
Chapter 19 Collections, ArrayList and Iterators
Chapter 20 Inheritance and Graphics
Chapter 21 Interfaces, Mouse Input; the Event-Handling Mechanism
Chapter 22 Keyboard Events and JMenu
Chapter 23 String Processing
Chapter 24 Exception Handling
Chapter 25 Sequential Access Files
Chapter 26 Database Programming; Command-Line Arguments
Chapter 27 Polymorphism, Advanced Graphics
Chapter 28 Java Speech API
Chapter 29 Web Applications; Apache Tomcat Web Server
Chapter 20 HTML
Chapter 21 Database and Creating Database Components
Chapter 22 form Attributes, method/action and Inserting Query Results

As you can see, the authors have chosen to introduce GUI concepts from the get-go, but have delayed explaining classes and objects to much later (he uses classes earlier, but shows how to build your own in Chapter 18).

Although we used this book in the Fall of 2009, the book is copyrighted 2004. According to the instructor, the authors do not plan on updating this text. Why then did the instructor choose this text? Well, he is a great believer in the learn-by-doing school of programming (I agree, BTW), and this text does a good job in this regard.

Each chapter illustrates an application and the student downloads a copy of the application with certain code omitted. It is the student's job to type in the code that is needed from the examples in the chapter. The authors extensively discuss each line of code the student types in. Quite interesting, actually. The drawback to this approach is that (at least in the earlier chapters), the program uses code that has not yet been introduced or discussed. Personally, I found this to somewhat upsetting.
On the whole, however, it did keep me focused on the concepts introduced in the chapter.

Another reservation about the book is the introduction of GUI so early. Each chapter introduced the technical details of some GUI Component, as well as one or more programming concepts. I would have preferred a thorough coverage of loops, methods, etc., and then a coverage of GUI.