The Practice and Philosophy of Object-Oriented Programming in Java

Java is a programming language and software platform used by millions of developers worldwide to create applications for everything from mobile devices and desktop computers to large-scale distributed systems and supercomputers. The design and implementation of a software system can be a massively complex process, like building a skyscraper, with teams of developers working for years to design, code, test, debug, configure, and deploy the various components of the system. This complexity can be managed through the use of object orientation, a philosophy of programming based on the creation of abstract bundles of data and behaviors that model meaningful entities in the problem domain.This book introduces readers with no prior programming experience to the practice and philosophy of object-oriented programming in Java. After an introduction, the book is partitioned into two parts. Part 1 develops general programming concepts with an object-based perspective through examples involving the use of objects. Objects are defined by classes, and in the first part of the book we work with preexisting classes available to all Java programmers through the Java Class Library. In Part 2, we learn how to create our own classes, which amounts to extending the Java language with useful new data types. This activity brings us into contact with the conceptual cornerstones of object-oriented programming. Practical features of the Java language and class library that rest clearly and firmly upon these cornerstones are explored in the rest of the book. The treatment of important concepts is structured around complete working examples of properly documented code following industry standards for coding style. The examples have evolved over long years of classroom experience, benefiting especially from collaborative experimentation with curious and imaginative students. Complementing the examples are the practice problems at the end of each chapter. Consistent practice is the single most important ingredient of success in almost every difficult endeavor, from programming to swimming to playing a musical instrument, so no effort has been spared to provide a large and diverse collection of practice problems, easy ones and challenging ones, often with connections to mathematics and the natural sciences. This book is not intended to serve as a comprehensive reference to Java or as a textbook for a course on data structures and algorithms. Computer science students and other prospective practitioners of Java will eventually need to learn about concurrency, networking, streams, database programming, and much more. Although this book does not head in those directions, it points the way. It provides a foundation for the study of advanced concepts and techniques in Java and flattens the learning curve for the study of other object-oriented languages. It is not a grand tour of all things in Java, but a Java-based introduction to programming guided by the light of object orientation. By the end of this book the reader will understand Objects, classes, and methods General programming concepts and techniques Community standards for coding style and documentation in Java Inheritance and polymorphism Interface types and event-handling Exception handling and basic elements of file I/O And the reader will be able to: Write properly documented Java code Create and use objects defined by classes in the standard Java library Solve programming problems of moderate complexity using loops and arrays Apply general principles of good programming to write clear and modular code Implement custom classes Use core collection interfaces Implement interfaces for event handling Use nested classes and lambda expressions Create useful new types through inheritance Design and implement graphical user interfaces Handle exceptions and perform basic I/O with text files