Barry A. Burd - Beginning Programming with Java For Dummies

Beginning Programming with JavaFor Dummies, 5th Edition

Published by: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774, www.wiley.com

Copyright 2017 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey

Published simultaneously in Canada

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2017944007

ISBN: 978-1-119-23553-8 (pbk); 978-1-119-23556-9 (ebk); 978-1-119-23554-5 (ebk)

1. Table of Contents

Whats your story?

• Are you a working stiff, interested in knowing more about the way your companys computers work?
• Are you a student who needs some extra reading in order to survive a beginning computer course?
• Are you a typical computer user youve done lots of word processing and you want to do something more interesting with your computer?
• Are you a job seeker with an interest in entering the fast-paced, glamorous, high-profile world of computer programming (or, at least, the decent-paying world of computer programming)?

Well, if you want to write computer programs, this book is for you. This book avoids the snobby of-course-you-already-know assumptions and describes computer programming from scratch.

The book uses Java a powerful, general-purpose computer programming language. But Javas subtleties and eccentricities arent the books main focus. Instead, this book emphasizes a process the process of creating instructions for a computer to follow. Many highfalutin books describe the mechanics of this process the rules, the conventions, and the formalisms. But those other books arent written for real people. Those books dont take you from where you are to where you want to be.

In this book, I assume very little about your experience with computers. As you read each section, you get to see inside my head. You see the problems that I face, the things that I think, and the solutions that I find. Some problems are the kind that I remember facing when I was a novice; other problems are the kind that I face as an expert. I help you understand, I help you visualize, and I help you create solutions on your own. I even get to tell a few funny stories.

I wish I could say, Open to a random page of this book and start writing Java code. Just fill in the blanks and dont look back. In a sense, this is true. You cant break anything by writing Java code, so youre always free to experiment.

But I have to be honest: If you dont understand the bigger picture, writing a program is difficult. Thats true with any computer programming language not just Java. If youre typing code without knowing what its about, and the code doesnt do exactly what you want it to do, youre just plain stuck.

In this book, I divide programming into manageable chunks. Each chunk is (more or less) a chapter. You can jump in anywhere you want , or wherever. You can even start by poking around in the middle of a chapter. Ive tried to make the examples interesting without making one chapter depend on another. When I use an important idea from another chapter, I include a note to help you find your way around.

In general, my advice is as follows:

• If you already know something, dont bother reading about it.
• If youre curious, dont be afraid to skip ahead. You can always sneak a peek at an earlier chapter, if you really need to do so.

Almost every technical book starts with a little typeface legend, and Beginning Programming with Java For Dummies, 5th Edition, is no exception. What follows is a brief explanation of the typefaces used in this book:

• New terms are set in italics.
• When I want you to type something short or perform a step, I use bold.
• Youll also see this computerese font. I use the computerese font for Java code, filenames, web page addresses (URLs), onscreen messages, and other such things. Also, if something you need to type is really long, it appears in computerese font on its own line (or lines).
• You need to change certain things when you type them on your own computer keyboard. For example, I may ask you to type