Book Image

Learn Java with Projects

By : Dr. Seán Kennedy, Maaike van Putten
5 (3)
Book Image

Learn Java with Projects

5 (3)
By: Dr. Seán Kennedy, Maaike van Putten

Overview of this book

Learn Java with Projects stands out in the world of Java guides; while some books skim the surface and others get lost in too much detail, this one finds a nice middle ground. You’ll begin by exploring the fundamentals of Java, from its primitive data types through to loops and arrays. Next, you’ll move on to object-oriented programming (OOP), where you’ll get to grips with key topics such as classes, objects, encapsulation, inheritance, polymorphism, interfaces, and more. The chapters are designed in a way that focuses on topics that really matter in real-life work situations. No extra fluff here, so that you get more time to spend on the basics and form a solid foundation. As you make progress, you’ll learn advanced topics including generics, collections, lambda expressions, streams and concurrency. This book doesn't just talk about theory—it shows you how things work with little projects, which eventually add up to one big project that brings it all together. By the end of this Java book, you’ll have sound practical knowledge of Java and a helpful guide to walk you through the important parts of Java.
Table of Contents (22 chapters)
1
Part 1: Java Fundamentals
9
Part 2: Object-Oriented Programming
15
Part 3: Advanced Topics

Understanding inheritance

There are three core pillars in Java: polymorphism, inheritance, and encapsulation (data hiding). It is easy to remember them using the acronym “PIE” (Polymorphism, Inheritance, and Encapsulation). Let us now examine inheritance.

Inheritance is a code reusability mechanism where common properties between related types are exploited by forming relationships between those types. Inheritance relationships in Java are created by extending from a class or by implementing an interface. We will cover interfaces in Chapter 10, so for the moment, we will assume classes throughout. To understand why inheritance in OOP is important, we will examine its advantages (and disadvantages). As we have not covered the terminology used yet, this discussion will be somewhat abstract.

Advantages of inheritance

One principle advantage of inheritance is code reuse. A new class can be written based on an existing class rather than writing the new class from...