The Art and Science of Java
The Art and Science of Java
Preliminary Draft
Eric S. Roberts Stanford University Stanford, California January 2006
Preface
This text is an early draft for a general introductory textbook in computer science—a Java-based version of my 1995 textbook The Art and Science of C. My hope is that I can use much of the existing material in writing the new book, although quite a bit of the material and overall organization have to change. At this point, the material is still in a preliminary form, and the feedback I get from those of you who are taking this course will almost certainly lead to some changes before the book is published. One of the central features of the text is that it incorporates the work of the Association of Computing Machinery’s Java Task Force, which was convened in 2004 with the following charter:
To review the Java language, APIs, and tools from the perspective of introductory computing education and to develop a stable collection of pedagogical resources that will make it easier to teach Java to first-year computing students without having those students overwhelmed by its complexity.
I am grateful to my colleagues on the Task Force—Kim Bruce, Robb Cutler, James H. Cross II, Scott Grissom, Karl Klee, Susan Rodger, Fran Trees, Ian Utting, and Frank Yellin—for all their hard work over the past year, as well as to the National Science Foundation, the ACM Education Board, the SIGCSE Special Projects Fund for their financial support. I also want to thank the participants in last year’s CS 298 seminar—Andrew Adams, Andy Aymeloglu, Kurt Berglund, Seyed Dorminani-Tabatabaei, Erik Forslin, Alex Himel, Tom Hurlbutt, Dave Myszewski, Ann Pan, Vishakha Parvate, Cynthia Wang, Paul Wilkins, and Julie Zhuo for helping me work through these ideas. In addition, I would like to thank my CS 106A TA Brandon Burr and all the hardworking section-leaders for taking on the challenge of helping to teach a course with a just-in-time approach to the materials.
Preliminary Draft
Eric S. Roberts Stanford University Stanford, California January 2006
Preface
This text is an early draft for a general introductory textbook in computer science—a Java-based version of my 1995 textbook The Art and Science of C. My hope is that I can use much of the existing material in writing the new book, although quite a bit of the material and overall organization have to change. At this point, the material is still in a preliminary form, and the feedback I get from those of you who are taking this course will almost certainly lead to some changes before the book is published. One of the central features of the text is that it incorporates the work of the Association of Computing Machinery’s Java Task Force, which was convened in 2004 with the following charter:
To review the Java language, APIs, and tools from the perspective of introductory computing education and to develop a stable collection of pedagogical resources that will make it easier to teach Java to first-year computing students without having those students overwhelmed by its complexity.
I am grateful to my colleagues on the Task Force—Kim Bruce, Robb Cutler, James H. Cross II, Scott Grissom, Karl Klee, Susan Rodger, Fran Trees, Ian Utting, and Frank Yellin—for all their hard work over the past year, as well as to the National Science Foundation, the ACM Education Board, the SIGCSE Special Projects Fund for their financial support. I also want to thank the participants in last year’s CS 298 seminar—Andrew Adams, Andy Aymeloglu, Kurt Berglund, Seyed Dorminani-Tabatabaei, Erik Forslin, Alex Himel, Tom Hurlbutt, Dave Myszewski, Ann Pan, Vishakha Parvate, Cynthia Wang, Paul Wilkins, and Julie Zhuo for helping me work through these ideas. In addition, I would like to thank my CS 106A TA Brandon Burr and all the hardworking section-leaders for taking on the challenge of helping to teach a course with a just-in-time approach to the materials.