Book Image

Transitioning to Java

By : Ken Fogel
Book Image

Transitioning to Java

By: Ken Fogel

Overview of this book

This comprehensive guide will help non-Java developers already using different languages transition from their current language to all things Java. The chapters are designed in a way that re-enforces a developer’s existing knowledge of object-oriented methodologies as they apply to Java. This book has been divided into four sections, with each section touching upon different aspects that’ll enable your effective transition. The first section helps you get to grips with the Java development environment and the Maven build tool for modern Java applications. In the second section, you’ll learn about Java language fundamentals, along with exploring object-oriented programming (OOP) methodologies and functional programming and discovering how to implement software design patterns in Java. The third section shows you how to code in Java on different platforms and helps you get familiar with the challenges faced on these platforms. In the fourth section, you’ll find out how you can manage and package your Java code. By the end of this Java programming book, you’ll have learned the core concepts of Java that’ll help you successfully transition from a different language to Java.
Table of Contents (23 chapters)
1
Part 1:The Java Development Environment
5
Part 2:Language Fundamentals
15
Part 3:GUI and Web Coding in Java
19
Part 4:Packaging Java Code

Understanding access control

One significant and invaluable feature of OOP is access control. If you have already worked with an OO language, then you may be familiar with this concept; if not, let me explain what access control means.

Access control in Java concerns the visibility of classes, fields, and methods to other classes. You must have sufficient access to create objects and access fields and methods in a class.

Access control, in other languages, may imply a security mechanism that can ensure that a request for access to a method–for example–is coming from an authenticated user. This is not what Java does; in Java, it is about how objects can interact with each other.

Let’s look at the options for visibility; the first will be Java packages.

Packages

The first piece of the access control puzzle is the Java package and its corresponding import statement. In Chapter 3, The Maven Build Tool, we learned about Java packages and how they are...