Book Image

Introduction to Programming

By : Nick Samoylov
Book Image

Introduction to Programming

By: Nick Samoylov

Overview of this book

Have you ever thought about making your computer do what you want it to do? Do you want to learn to program, but just don't know where to start? Instead of guiding you in the right direction, have other learning resources got you confused with over-explanations? Don't worry. Look no further. Introduction to Programming is here to help. Written by an industry expert who understands the challenges faced by those from a non-programming background, this book takes a gentle, hand-holding approach to introducing you to the world of programming. Beginning with an introduction to what programming is, you'll go on to learn about languages, their syntax, and development environments. With plenty of examples for you to code alongside reading, the book's practical approach will help you to grasp everything it has to offer. More importantly, you'll understand several aspects of application development. As a result, you'll have your very own application running by the end of the book. To help you comprehensively understand Java programming, there are exercises at the end of each chapter to keep things interesting and encourage you to add your own personal touch to the code and, ultimately, your application.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)

Interfaces, Classes, and Object Construction

This chapter explains to readers the most important aspects of Java programming: Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), object factories, method overriding, hiding, and overloading. An explanation of the design advantage of aggregation (versus inheritance) follows, starting the discussion around software system design. The chapter concludes with an overview of Java data structures.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

  • What is an API?
  • Interface and object factory as APIs
  • Overriding, hiding, and overloading
  • The this and super keywords
  • Constructors and constructor overloading
  • Final variable, final method, and final class
  • Object association (aggregation)
  • Exercise – Restricting a class instantiation to a single shared instance