Absolute Java (6th edition)

Book Preface

This book is designed to serve as a textbook and reference for programming in the Java language. Although it does include programming techniques, it is organized around the features of the Java language rather than any particular curriculum of programming techniques. The main audience I had in mind when writing this book was undergraduate students who have not had extensive programming experience with the Java language. As such, it would be a suitable Java text or reference for either a first programming course or a later computer science course that uses Java. This book is designed to accommodate a wide range of users. The introductory chapters are written at a level that is accessible to beginners, while the boxed sections of those chapters serve to quickly introduce more experienced programmers to basic Java syntax. Later chapters are still designed to be accessible, but are written at a level suitable for students who have progressed to these more advanced topics.

CHANGES IN THIS EDITION

This sixth edition presents the same programming philosophy as the fifth edition. For instructors, you can teach the same course, presenting the same topics in the same order with no changes in the material covered or the chapters assigned. The changes to this edition consist almost exclusively of supplementary material added to the chapters of the previous edition, namely:

■ An introduction to functional programming with Java 8’s lambda expressions.
â–  Additional content and examples on looping, networking, and exception handling.
â–  Introduction to building GUIs using JavaFX.
â–  Fifteen new programming projects.
â–  Five new video notes for a total of 51 video notes. These videos cover specific topics and offer solutions to selected programming projects. The videos walk students through the process of problem solving and coding to reinforce key programming concepts. An icon appears in the margin of the book when a video is available about the corresponding topic in the text.