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
  • 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
    • Exceptions
    • Assertions
    • Workshop: Throwing and Catching Exceptions
    • Summary
    • Q&A
    • Quiz
    • Questions
    • Activities
  • 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

Q&A

1. Is it possible to create your own exceptions?

   You can create your own exceptions easily by making them a subclass of an existing exception, such as Exception, the superclass of all exceptions. In a subclass of Exception, there are only two methods you might want to override: Exception() with no arguments and Exception() with a String as an argument. In the latter, the string should be a message describing the error that has occurred.

2. Why doesn't this hour cover how to throw and catch errors in addition to exceptions?

   Java divides problems into Errors and Exceptions because they differ in severity. Exceptions are less severe, so they are something that should be dealt with in your programs using try-catch or throws. Errors, on the other hand, are more serious and can't be dealt with adequately in a program.

   Two examples of these errors are stack overflows and out-of-memory errors. These can cause the Java interpreter to crash, and there's no way you can fix them in your own program as the interpreter runs it.

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