Course Description

This course covers fundamentals of programming and object-oriented programming. It is designed to prepare students to become proficient Java programmers.

This course is fundamentals first by introducing basic programming concepts and techniques before designing custom classes. The fundamental concepts and techniques of selection statements, loops, methods, and arrays are the foundation for programming. Building this strong foundation prepares students to learn object-oriented programming and advanced Java programming.

This course teaches programming in a problem-driven way that focuses on problem solving rather than syntax. We make introductory programming interesting by using thought-provoking problems in a broad context. The central thread of early chapters is on problem solving. Appropriate syntax and library are introduced to enable readers to write programs for solving the problems. To support the teaching of programming in a problem-driven way, the course provides a wide variety of problems at various levels of difficulty to motivate students. To appeal to students in all majors, the problems cover many application areas, including math, science, business, financial, gaming, animation, and multimedia.

Key concepts covered include:

• Control Statements
• Methods
• Arrays and ArrayLists
• Classes, Objects, Methods and Strings

The best way to teach programming is by example, and the only way to learn programming is by doing. Basic concepts are explained by example and a large number of exercises with various levels of difficulty are provided for students to practice. For programming lessons, we assign programming exercises after each lecture.

Our goal is to produce a course that teaches problem solving and programming in a broad context using a wide variety of interesting examples.