Sams Teach Yourself Java 2 in 24 Hours

By Rogers Cadenhead

• Table of Contents
  • Copyright
  • About the Author
  • About the Technical Editor
  • Acknowledgments
  • We Want to Hear from You!
  • Reader Services
  • Introduction
  • Hour 1. Becoming a Programmer
  • Hour 2. Writing Your First Program
  • Hour 3. Vacationing in Java
  • Hour 4. Understanding How Java Programs Work
  • Part II: Learning the Basics of Programming
  • Hour 5. Storing and Changing Information in a Program
  • Hour 6. Using Strings to Communicate
  • Hour 7. Using Conditional Tests to Make Decisions
  • Hour 8. Repeating an Action with Loops
  • Part III: Working with Information in New Ways
  • Hour 9. Storing Information with Arrays
  • Hour 10. Creating Your First Object
    • How Object-Oriented Programming Works
    • Objects in Action
    • What Objects Are
    • Understanding Inheritance
    • Building an Inheritance Hierarchy
    • Converting Objects and Simple Variables
    • Workshop: Creating an Object
    • Summary
    • Q&A
    • Quiz
    • Activities
  • Hour 11. Describing What Your Object Is Like
  • Hour 12. Making the Most of Existing Objects
  • Part IV: Programming a Graphical User Interface
  • Hour 13. Building a Simple User Interface
  • Hour 14. Laying Out a User Interface
  • Hour 15. Responding to User Input
  • Hour 16. Building a Complex User Interface
  • Part V: Creating Multimedia Programs
  • Hour 17. Creating Interactive Web Programs
  • Hour 18. Handling Errors in a Program
  • Hour 19. Creating a Threaded Program
  • Hour 20. Reading and Writing Files
  • Part VI: Creating Multimedia Programs
  • Hour 21. Using Fonts and Color
  • Hour 22. Playing Sound Files
  • Hour 23. Working with Graphics
  • Hour 24. Creating Animation
  • Part VII: Appendixes
  • Appendix A. Tackling New Features of Java 2 Version 1.4
  • Appendix B. Using the Java 2 Software Development Kit
  • Appendix C. Programming with the Java 2 Software Development Kit
  • Appendix D. Using Sun ONE Studio
  • Appendix E. Where to Go from Here: Java Resources
  • Appendix F. This Book's Web Site

Hour 10. Creating Your First Object

One of the more fearsome examples of jargon that you'll encounter during these 24 hours is object-oriented programming. This is a complicated term that describes, in an elegant way, what a computer program is and how it works.

Before object-oriented programming, computer programs were usually described under the simplest definition you've learned in this book: sets of instructions that are listed in a file and handled in some kind of reliable order. Whether the program is big or small, the programmer's job is largely the same—write instructions for each thing the computer must do. By thinking of a program as a collection of objects instead, you can figure out the tasks a program must accomplish and assign the tasks to the objects where they best belong.

During this hour, the following topics will be covered:

• Understanding objects
• Describing an object with attributes
• Determining how objects behave
• Combining objects
• Inheriting from other objects
• Creating an object
• Converting objects and other types of information

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