Course I: Introduction to Java Programming

There are 12 units of study

What is Java?

If you're curious about computer programming or wondering what all the fuss is about, this course is a great place to start. You'll learn the basics of programming and enough of the Java programming language to start writing your own programs. You'll also gain a foundation for further study and training in computer programming or in Java.

Programming Fundamentals

Have you ever wondered exactly what a computer program is? In this lesson, we'll go over how a program does what it does, and then we'll examine the steps involved in designing and writing a program. Since lack of preparation is the most common cause of program problems (or almost any other undertaking!), we’ll focus on the planning stages of designing a program.

Working With Objects

Even if you’re familiar with computers and have done some programming, you may not be familiar with object-oriented programming, which is what Java is all about. In today's lesson, we'll discuss classes, objects, attributes, and methods, and how they all work together to form programs that are both modular and reusable.

Installing the Java Compiler

Now that you’ve got some basic concepts under your belt, it's time to get down to business. Today, you’ll download and install all the software you need to write and test Java programs. You’ll also test your installations by running your very first program, and you'll learn what it means to compile a program before running it.

Your First Java Program

Now that you’ve installed all the software and run your first program, you’re ready to actually write a program of your own. In this lesson, you’ll start from scratch and write your first program, which will duplicate the results of the one you ran last time. Along the way, you’ll learn how to define a class, the data it needs, and the methods that make it work.

Data Declarations, Constructors, Expressions, and main()

This lesson will be a bit like peeling an onion. We ran a program that we didn’t write (the whole onion) in Lesson 4. In Lesson 5, we took one layer off the onion when we wrote a program to do the same simple task. Today, we'll peel back another layer or two as we start the process of writing a more complicated program, one that will take us several lessons to finish. Hopefully, we'll be able to avoid the tears as we begin our development and go over basic program structure, data types, and calculations.

Conditions and Logical Expressions: Making Decisions

In this lesson we’re going to continue developing the program we started last time. We’ll add decision-making to our programming repertoire, and we'll see how Java compares values. Then we'll discuss how to use those comparisons to decide what course of action to take in any given situation.

Loops: Repeating Actions

Round, and round, and round we go. . .where we stop, nobody knows! Actually, you will know, because today's lesson is all about using loops to repeat actions as many times as you want. And if you write your loops well, you'll definitely stop where you want!

Applets: Working in Browser Windows

In today's lesson, you’re going to learn how to write applets, which are small Java programs that run in browser windows and use GUI (Graphical User Interface) tools. Just like before, we’ll start out very simply, then dive into the deep end in another lesson.

Basic Shapes: Lines, Rectangles, Ovals, Arcs, and Polygons

Ready to bring out your inner Picasso? Today, we'll use Java’s 2-D graphical tools to draw simple shapes like rectangles, ovals, arcs, and polygons. Along the way, you’ll also learn some more programming techniques related to storing groups of items in a single collection called an array.

Images and Fonts

In this lesson, you’ll improve your graphics capabilities by learning how to load an image and display it. If you have any digital pictures of family or friends, now is the time to get them out! You’ll also see how to enhance your text capabilities using different font faces, styles, and sizes.

Animation and Interaction

Wow! We’re down to the last lesson already! We’re going to wrap up the course with a couple of final topics related to graphics: animation and interactivity. You’ll see how to animate simple shapes by moving them and redrawing them. Then you’ll learn how to make your programs interact with the mouse so that a user can make things happen using a simple click-and-drag interface.

Course II: Intermediate Java Programming

There are 12 units of study

Introduction and Java Review

Now that you've done some Java programming, you may be wondering, "What's next?" In this first lesson, you'll get a taste of what you'll learn before the course is over. To make sure everyone is on the same page, we'll do a short review of the Java skills you should already have—this will get your wheels turning if you haven't worked with Java in a while! You'll also find out about a few different development environments you can use to create and run your own Java programs.

Arrays, Loops, and Using Multple Classes

The array is one of the most commonly used data structures in any programming language. In this lesson, we'll go over how arrays work, including their internal structure. You'll find out how to create arrays, how to store and access data in them, and how to process them efficiently using loops. Along the way, you'll also learn the difference between a class that's a complete program and one that isn't. You'll see how to write classes that use other classes in their processing, which is helpful when you're working with a lot of information.

File Input and Output

Computers can do an incredible amount of work, but it's often all for nothing if you can't save the results after the program finishes. That's where data files come into play. Today's lesson shows you how to read and write computer data files using Java. This process takes place many times every day in all kinds of programs, so it's a very useful and important one to understand.

Inheritance and Class Hierarchies

Have you ever wondered exactly what the big deal is about object-oriented programming (OOP)? Why does is matter whether a language is object-oriented or not? In this lesson, we'll look at exactly what object orientation means to Java through the topic of inheritance. One of the primary features of an OOP language is how its classes inherit features from other classes in the class hierarchy. You'll find out how Java's class hierarchy is organized, and you'll learn how to use the different types of classes (interfaces, abstract classes, and concrete classes) to your advantage.

Stand-Alone GUI Applications

We'll explore Java's GUI tools in today's lesson. Just about every program we use on computers today has a graphical user interface, or GUI. That just means the program appears in a window with menus, icons, buttons, and so on. Java has hundreds of GUI tools we can use to build our own applications to run in any windowed operating system that supports Java (Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X, among others). You'll learn how to set up a stand-alone application using Java's GUI tools, including labels, buttons, dialogs, and more.

Layouts and Multiple GUI Components

Today you'll continue learning about Java's GUI capabilities. You'll explore several ways that Java can organize multiple GUI components in a window, and you'll find out how to split windows into smaller areas called panels, which you can organize in different ways. You'll see how to set up Java's scroll bars in a window or part of a window so that users can scroll up, down, left, and right through the display.

GUI Menus

What do almost all modern-day programs have in common? They have menus. Menus are probably the best-known and most widely used GUI programming feature. In this lesson, you'll learn how to create menus using Java's menu bar, menu, and menu item components. You'll be able to create as many menus in an application as you need, each with all the menu items and submenus necessary to perform the task you're programming.

A Working GUI Application: Part 1

By this time, you'll have spent three lessons learning about different Java GUI programming techniques and tools. Today, you'll learn how to put the pieces together into a complete, reasonably complex Java application. You'll see how to combine menu options, graphics, check boxes, radio buttons, and text entry fields into a windowed program that can actually perform a useful task: It allows someone to order a pizza! (How much more useful can it get?)

A Working GUI Application: Part 2

Today, we'll take what we started in Lesson 8, where you learned how to design and build a GUI interface to order a pizza, and we'll make it functional. You already have all the GUI components displayed nicely in the window, so now you'll learn how to make your program gather all the data from the different components in the window, and then put that information together into a useful pizza order. (I'm afraid it won't actually deliver the pizza, though.) You'll get an idea of what you can create with Java's GUI capabilities.

Java Collections: Part 1

Most programmers don't write computer programs to deal with individual data items. Usually, they write programs to deal with groups of items. In this lesson, you'll learn all about Java's collection classes, a group of data structures designed to work with many items at once. You'll discover the difference between lists, queues, sets, maps, and other types of collections. We'll explore how to work with a list to load a group of items from a file into a list, and how to display items from the list in a GUI window. Along the way, you'll learn another useful technique in GUI programming: how to use Java's file chooser dialog to select a file to open and process.

Java Collections: Part 2

To explore more of Java's collections, today we'll continue working on the program we began in Lesson 10. You'll find out how to navigate through a list (forward and backward), displaying each list item as you go. You'll also see how to set up a window with multiple display formats, and switch between them by clicking tabs that describe the different views. You'll also learn how to create items that Java can compare, even if Java doesn't know the details of what is in the items. You'll use that capability to build a list and sort its items in a specified sequence. That's a very useful and important capability when you're dealing with large numbers of items.

Java Collections: Part 3

In our last lesson, we'll delve even deeper into the topic of collections. (You can see that it's a large and important subject!) You'll find out how to use maps, which are Java collections that let you store and retrieve data items quickly based on a unique data element of each item (its key). Think of looking up a telephone number in a large telephone book like New York City's. Finding a single number would be impossible if the data weren't properly organized. We'll see how to use the same type of search to quickly find any data item we need in a collection. And while we're doing that, you'll also learn a bit more about Java's other features, including Java's wrapper class, which is one more important data feature of the Java language that you'll use quite often. By the end of this lesson, you'll be amazed at what you're able to do with Java!