Programming in Java

Lecturer: Dr A.C. Norman (acn1@cl.cam.ac.uk)

No. of lectures: 12

This course is a prerequisite for Further Java (Part IB) and the Group Project (Part IB).

This is a new course so the following should not be regarded as definitive.

Introduction.

Course objectives. Historical introduction to Java and its relatives. Comparisons with ML. The sorts of programming task addressed here.

Basic use of Java.

Compiling and running Java programs. The layout of a program in Java. The basic data types and operations on them. Some important libraries. More control structures. Defining new types.

Design and testing programs in Java.

Understanding your objective. Decomposing a task into manageable units. Incremental development. Data structures. Program structure and information hiding. Using existing library code.

Representative Java applications.

Calculation. File access. User interface. Network access.

Conclusion.

Strengths and limitations of Java. A brief mention of alternatives.

Recommended book:

Eckel, B. (1998). Thinking in Java. Prentice-Hall.