Programs in the object-oriented language Java are compiled into Java code, which is independent of any particular machine, with a specific interpreter for each kind of computer. This allows for many facilities for program testing and debugging. This book explains how to compile and run a Java program, including how to define constructor instance methods, abstract classes and abstract methods, classes, and hierarchies. Java provides facilities for program modularity and exception handling. Interfaces can be used to impose requirements. Java programs can be prepared as applications to be run by Web browsers (applets).

The language is described through the development of a simple program, from a crude first version to a sophisticated applet for a Web station. The authors do not assume that the reader is an experienced programmer; they explain every detail, describing variables, assignment statements, classes, and so on. The presentation is concise. The authors include some material on good programming practice for designing robust programs. The procedural part of Java has been constructed using C syntax, so it can be rapidly mastered by C programmers. This book is easily readable, and the program presented at the end of the book is impressive and gives a good idea of the power of Java.

The book explains recursion through two well-known examples: powers of 2 and Fibonacci numbers. The iterative forms of these examples are easy to program, and for Fibonacci numbers are far more efficient than the recursive form. The authors could easily have chosen more convincing examples, however.

This book is a mixture of elementary programming and advanced concepts, of simple programs and principles of good programming practice for large pieces of software, and the mixture provokes some doubts about the book’s efficiency. If you do not know any programming and need explanations of compiling, interpreting, variables, and assignments, it will be difficult to grasp the concepts of class, hierarchy, and property inheritance from reading the brief paragraphs devoted to them in this book. If you have already written procedural programs, you can skip many pages of this book, and the remaining coverage of the object-oriented features is rather short. Experienced object-oriented programmers will likely make good use of this book in the context of Web stations, which are covered with sufficient clarity in the last chapters, learning what is specific to this kind of programming, but a large part of the book will be of no use to them.