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 inheritance

What do you do when you have a class that does almost everything you need to get done? What do you do when you have methods in a class that don’t quite do what you need to get done? How do you deal with these two issues if you do not have access to the source code of the class and its methods? What if you do have access to the source code, but other parts of your program expect the original unchanged code? The answer is inheritance.

Inheritance is described as a relationship between two classes in which one class is called the superclass. This class contains the fields and methods to handle a specific task. This superclass is a generalization, and sometimes you need to enhance this kind of class. In this case, rather than rewriting the original class, you can create a new class called the subclass that inherits or specializes the superclass by overriding methods in the superclass or adding additional methods and fields. The subclass is now made up...