Java Programming for Beginners

Duration:	4 days
Type:	beginner

Description

This is an introductory course for novice developers who have little or no previous programming experience. The course introduces the fundamentals of Java with particular emphasis on basic OO concepts and writing efficient and maintainable code.

Prerequisites

Ideally delegates should have some previous programming experience and knowledge of basic IT concepts.

List of Modules

Core Programming Concepts

Variables, functions and libraries

Compiled programs verses interpreted scripts

Typed and untyped programming

Static verses dynamic typing

Threads and call stacks

Errors and exceptions

Core Java Concepts

Origins and goals of the Java language

Bytecode and the Java Virtual Machine

Packages and dynamic class loading

Garbage collection in Java

Creating Simple Programs

Writing Hello World! in Java

Declaring variables to hold numbers

Declaring variables to hold strings

Casting and converting between types

Reading and writing from the console

Making Choices and Looping

Conditional execution using the if statement

Conditional execution using the switch statement

Bounded iteration using the for loop

Unbounded iteration using the while and do ... while loops

Alerting the execution of a loop using break and continue

Different ways of writing infinite loops

Java Methods in Depth

What does the static keyword mean?

Understanding how parameters are passed

Choosing if a method should be public or private

Understanding recursion and writing recursive methods

Introduction to Object Orientation

What is a data structure?

Why are data structures dangerous?

What are classes and objects?

What makes an object different from a class?

Key principle one - Abstraction

Key principle two - Encapsulation

How do you avoid repetition in classes?

Key principle three - Inheritance

How do you change inherited behavior?

Key principle four - Polymorphism

Support for OO in Java

Allocating objects from the heap

Linking to objects via references

Moving references to other objects

Pointing a reference at null

Ensuring an object is no longer referenced

A brief introduction to the theory of garbage collection

Built in Objects in Java

Strings are objects in Java

Arrays are objects in Java

Every class has an instance of Class

Object Oriented Development Part One

Creating basic Java classes

Choosing accessibility levels

Overloading and overriding methods

Overriding the toString method

Comparing references using the instanceof operator

Comparing references using class objects

Inheriting from a base class

Creating abstract and final classes

Object Oriented Development Part Two

Writing appropriate class constructors

Private constructors and singletons

Static and instance initialization blocks

Top down class and object initialization

Declaring and using interfaces

Using inner and anonymous classes

Implementing equal and hashcode

Cloning and copy constructors

GUI Development in Java

How the Swing library works

Creating a window class via inheritance

Adding widgets to the window

Positioning widgets using layout managers

Adding event handling to the GUI

Exception Handling in Java

Introducing errors, runtime exceptions and checked exceptions

Exceptions in constructors and finalizers

Implementing an effective exception handling strategy

The correct use of finally blocks

Using Java 1.4 assertions

Java I/O

Introducing input and output streams

Introducing readers and writers

Using File objects to resolve file paths

Text based file I/O with buffered streams

Binary based file I/O using data streams

Serializing Java objects

Customizing Java Serialization