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 composition in classes

When we create an application that employs numerous classes, we must decide how they will interact with each other. In object-oriented programming terminology, a method in one class that calls a method in another class is called messaging. Despite this, most developers describe this as calling a method, as I do. How objects send these messages or call methods in other objects is what composition is about.

There are two ways for objects to be connected – association and aggregation. Let’s discuss these connections.

Association

In association, the object reference we need to call or message a method is created outside the calling object. Let’s begin with a class that we will want to call:

public class Receiver {
    public void displayName(String name) {
        System.out.printf("%s%n", name);
    }
}

This is a trivial method...