David Parsons - Foundational Java: Key Elements and Practical Programming, 2nd Edition

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In the Spring of 1996, I attended the Object Technology conference at Christ church College, Oxford. The excited buzz around the new Java language at this conference got me curious, and a few months spent getting up to speed with the syntax convinced me that it was worth trying out as a teaching language. After overcoming some hurdles, including getting a teaching lab upgraded from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95 so we could run Java, I taught a class of student volunteers at what is now Southampton Solent University the basics of Java in 1997. From this experience I wrote the first edition of Introductory Java which was published by Letts Educational in 1998. In 1999 I left academia to spend some years in industry, training and consulting in Java. This gave me a whole new perspective on the language as a professional tool, and the second edition of Introductory Java was published in 2003. By 2012 I was back teaching various programming languages in academia, but also continuing to deliver Java training for commercial clients and felt that a completely new book was needed to address all the changes in the language over the intervening decade. Hence the first edition of Foundational Java: Key Elements and Practical Programming was almost a completely new book with a new focus and a new publisher, covering Java up to version 7.

Fast forward to 2020 and the many accumulated changes to Java since version 7 had reached a point where I felt that Foundational Java needed a significant update, hence this second edition. It has grown out of more than 20 years of teaching Java both to students and to professionals across the world and reflects a wealth of experience and insight. I have had a great journey with Java, and I am grateful for the opportunity to share my Java knowledge with readers of this book.

The second edition of Foundational Java: Key Elements and Practical Programming guides the reader through all the core features of Java, and some more recent innovations, in a way that builds skills and confidence though tried and trusted stages, supported by exercises that reinforce the key learning points. Using this book, the reader is introduced to all the most useful and commonly applied Java syntax and libraries and is provided with many example programs that can provide the basis for more substantial applications.

Integral to the book is the use of the Eclipse Integrated Development Environment (IDE) and the JUnit testing framework. This ensures maximum productivity and code quality when learning Java. However, the fundamentals of using the Java compiler and run time are also explained to ensure that skills are not confined to one environment. In addition, coverage of the Ant tool ensures that the reader is equipped to automatically build, test and deploy their applications, including simple web applications, independent of an IDE.

The book is organized into 20 chapters that cover various levels of Java (see Suggested Uses for further information). Each chapter covers a discrete topic and includes scaffolded exercises that build skills in a step by step fashion. I have experimented in the past with teaching Java using an objects first approach but experience has shown me that it is better to cover the language fundamentals before addressing object-oriented concepts, so this book follows an objects later philosophy.

The key features of this book are that it