Java Fundamentals: A fast-paced and pragmatic introduction to one of the world's most popular programming languages

Enhance your career options with this well-crafted object-oriented programming language that enjoys the support of an enormous ecosystem of tools and libraries

Key Features

• Get introduced to Java, its features, and its ecosystem
• Understand how Java uses object-oriented programming
• Become an expert Java exception handler

Book Description

Since its inception, Java has stormed the programming world. Its features and functionalities provide developers with the tools needed to write robust cross-platform applications. Java Fundamentals introduces you to these tools and functionalities that will enable you to create Java programs.

The book begins with an introduction to the language, its philosophy, and evolution over time, until the latest release. You'll learn how the javac/java tools work and what Java packages are - the way a Java program is usually organized. Once you are comfortable with this, you'll be introduced to advanced concepts of the language, such as control flow keywords. You'll explore object-oriented programming and the part it plays in making Java what it is. In the concluding chapters, you'll get to grips with classes, typecasting, and interfaces, and understand the use of data structures, arrays, strings, handling exceptions, and creating generics.

By the end of this book, you will have learned to write programs, automate tasks, and follow advanced courses on algorithms and data structures or explore more advanced Java courses.

What you will learn

• Create and run Java programs
• Use data types, data structures, and control flow in your code
• Implement best practices while creating objects
• Work with constructors and inheritance
• Understand advanced data structures to organize and store data
• Employ generics for stronger check-types during compilation
• Learn to handle exceptions in your code

Who this book is for

Java Fundamentals is designed for tech enthusiasts who are familiar with some programming languages and want a quick introduction to the most important principles of Java.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction to Java
2. Variables, Data Types, and Operators
3. Control Flow
4. Object-Oriented Programming
5. OOP in Depth
6. Data Structures, Arrays, and Strings
7. The Java Collections Framework and Generics
8. Advanced Data Structures in Java
9. Exception Handling

Gazihan Alankus holds a PhD in computer science from Washington University in St. Louis. Currently, he is an assistant professor at the Izmir University of Economics in Turkey. He teaches and conducts research on game development, mobile application development, and human-computer interaction. He is a Google developer expert in Dart and develops Flutter applications with his students in his company Gbot, which he founded in 2019.

Rogrio Theodoro de Brito has a bachelor's degree in computer science and a master's degree in computational biology, both from the University of So Paulo, Brazil. Academically, he is a free/open source software (FOSS) enthusiast and teaches various subjects in computer science and IT at the Mackenzie Presbyterian University in So Paulo, Brazil. He was the technical reviewer of Packt's edX E-Learning Course Marketing. After completing his master's degree, he started his role as an academic instructor and has been working with many languages, such as C, C++, Java, C, Perl, and Python. He writes, co-writes, and maintains a number of projects with two of the most prominent learning platforms, coursera-dl and edx-dl, and is dedicated to helping users of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) download materials for their study from MOOC platforms. He is very excited by using the Java language to build Android applications.

Basheer Ahamed Fazal works as a technical architect at a renowned Software as a Service-based product company in India. He had advanced his career with technology organizations such as Cognizant, Symantec, HID Global, and Ooyala. He has seasoned his programming and algorithmic abilities by solving complex problems around agile product development, including those to do with microservices, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud-based architectures, application security, and big data- and AI- driven initiatives. Apart from his technical career, he has emerged as a professional trainer and has conducted various training sessions on Java, Python, application security, machine learning, and more. He holds a bachelor's degree in electronics and communication engineering from Anna University, Chennai, and has a Scrum Master Certification from Scrum Alliance.

Vinicius Isola started programming back in 1999 using Macromedia Flash and ActionScript. In 2005, he took the Java Certification and specialized in building web and enterprise applications. Always working on all parts of the stack, JavaScript and web technologies have always been present in his many job roles and the companies he has worked for. In his free time, he likes to work on open-source projects and mentor new developers.

Miles Obare leads the data engineering team at Betika, a Nairobi-based sports betting firm. He works on building real-time, scalable backend systems. Formerly, he worked as a data engineer for a fintech start-up, where his role involved developing and deploying data pipelines and machine learning models to production. He holds a degree in electrical and computer engineering and often writes about distributed systems.