CodeNotes for Java: Intermediate and Advanced Language Features

Chapter 1: Introduction
JAVA: INTERMEDIATE AND ADVANCED TOPICS

If you work with Java for any length of time, you will almost certainly encounter many of the concepts presented in this book. However, there is a difference between being able to use the language and actually understanding the language. The main purpose of this book is to help any beginning or intermediate Java programmer develop a firm understanding of both how and why the Java language works. For more advanced Java developers, this book contains many examples and design notes about how to use some of Java's most powerful features. As part of the CodeNotes philosophy, this book focuses on practical examples, including working with collections, creating and using threads, selecting the proper I/O classes, and designing an application that supports multiple languages. With the numerous code samples and extensive additional material on the CodeNotes website, this book will make almost anyone a better Java developer.

ROAD MAP

This book as a whole is fundamentally about why Java works the way it does. However, the individual chapters are devoted specifically to features found in the Java 2 Standard Edition (J2SE). The core of this book is divided into five main development chapters (Chapters 3 to 7), a short deployment chapter (Chapter 8), and The Dark Side (Chapter 9) for everything that was left out.

-Chapter 3, Objects and Classes. Java is fundamentally an object-oriented language, which means that objects, encapsulation, and polymorphism play a major role in every single aspect of the language. At first glance, this chapter may seem like a basic topic. However, understanding why the Java language works the way it does requires a firm grasp of inheritance, interfaces, inner classes, and reflection. Although this chapter does explain the basic mechanics, it goes much further into the possibilities that are only available through object-oriented programming.

-Chapter 4, Collections. Almost every developer is familiar with the concept of an array as a data-storage mechanism. However, arrays are not always useful. The Java Collections Framework offers a set of alternative classes for storing and managing collections of data. Building extensively on interfaces and inheritance, the Java Collections Framework provides an ideal example of how object-oriented programming works in practice.