Course: Java Novice to Javanista - Part 1 Java Novice

This course serves as a theoretical introduction to the Java programming language - a class-based, object-oriented, and platform-independent language. Use this course to discover what these qualities mean when using Java to develop programs. Explore some of the significant features of Java. Get a glimpse into the Java ecosystem and the phases involved in translating Java code to a machine-executed form. In doing this, you'll examine concepts such as compilers, Java bytecode, and the Java Virtual Machine. Delve into some of the other properties of the language, such as using the just-in-time compiler and the automatic garbage collector. Finally, learn about the vast array of fields in which Java programming can be applied. At the end of this course, you'll have a solid foundational comprehension of the characteristics and use cases of the Java programming language.

The Java programming language is a class-based, object-oriented, and platform-independent language. Follow along with this course and get some hands-on experience with Java programming. Get an environment ready to write Java programs by setting up the IntelliJ IDE. Write what might be your first Java program, where you print out a line of text to the console. While doing so, you'll get familiar with the structure of a Java program as well as the steps involved in running it. Move on to examine the syntax of Java and some of the common sources of errors. Then, get a glimpse into the use of comments to explain your code. Upon completion of this course, you'll be able to create your own program in Java.

The Java programming language is multi-faceted. To use it, developers need to understand what's meant by Java variables and recognize the different data types in the language. This course focuses on Java variables, and more specifically, the various primitive data types this language has to offer. Follow along with this course and create variables in your program to comprehend the effects of static typing in Java. Then, explore the various primitive data types in Java - from numeric types, such as integers and doubles, to text representations in the form of strings. Finally, you'll investigate the use of an ordered collection of data, namely arrays. When you're done with this course, you'll be able to confidently employ variables and several primitive data types when programming in Java.

When developing with Java, you can perform many different operation types on the data in your Java program. The goal of this course is to give you hands-on experience with these operations. Begin by working with the basic math operations that apply to numeric data, such as addition, division, and so on, recognizing how these apply to different numeric types. Use logical and comparison operators, which allow you to evaluate a condition and check the relationship between different variables. Lastly, implement string operations in Java and explore some of the methods used to transform data from one type to another. When you're finished with this course, you'll be able to perform a variety of operations on your Java program data.

Before you build any significant Java application, it is important to get familiar with controlling the flow of code using control structures - a fundamental concept in any programming language. And this is precisely the focus of this course. With the help of this course, you'll learn how to work with basic if statements, where code is executed if a certain condition is met and if-else and switch statements, which allow you to check for multiple conditions and run chunks of code accordingly. You'll then delve into for and while loops, which allow you to define a block of code that needs to be executed repeatedly under specific conditions and recognize the use of continue and break statements that influence their behavior. After finishing this course, you'll have the knowledge and skills to control the flow of code execution in your program based on the value of variables or the outcome of operations.

Classes are a core concept in Java's object-oriented programming model. The class is an abstract type and an object is an instance of that type. Object oriented Java programming allows classes to be instantiated and inherit features from the Java.lang.object. You will learn about member variables, fields, functions, and methods. Learn to instantiate objects of built-in Java classes and invoke methods on them.

Modeling entities in the real world require you to create custom classes to add to the various built-in classes already provided by Java. Creating such custom classes is key to harnessing the power of object-oriented programming (OOP) in Java. This course focuses on defining such custom classes and then creating objects. Make the most of this course by exploring custom classes, the use of constructors, and modifiers such as private and public. You will also learn the idiomatic Java method of working with getter and setter methods as well as conventions in naming, input parameters, and return types from such methods. After completing this course, you'll not only be able to define custom classes to serve as types in your programs but also instantiate and use objects of these custom classes.

Modeling complex entities involves defining and invoking methods and constructors. Furthermore, defining robust and reusable code requires learning important mechanisms for code re-uses, such as constructor chaining and method overloading. Use this course to delve into these important techniques that are required to write clean and maintainable Java code. Learn how to define methods with the same name but different signatures (i.e., different order and type of input arguments), invoke overloaded methods, and add constructors to a class. This course will also enable you to use the 'this' keyword to invoke multiple constructors, also known as constructor chaining. By the time you are done with this course, you will have the skills to use important code re-use mechanisms such as method overloading and constructor chaining in java.

The best way to avoid mysterious bugs while running your Java code is to be adept at working with static members, argument passing, and object base class methods. Use this course to master these subtleties: the difference between static and instance variables and methods, the hashCode contract, and how pass-by-value and pass-by-reference semantics play out with argument passing in Java. By the end of this course, you'll be able to model state in classes using both static and instance variables, write methods to avoid unexpected changes in input arguments, and adhere to the hashCode contract so that objects function as expected when placed in common Java containers.

Java is an object-oriented programming language, meaning Java programs and frameworks are built on the pillars of inheritance and runtime polymorphism. Inheritance is used to model is-a relationships between classes; such relationships could include either behavior and state or just behavior alone. Use this course to appreciate how classes can be used to model an entity's state and behavior and inheritance to model is-a relationships between two classes. Create various objects of the universal base class Java.lang.Object and of other built-in and custom classes. Use the instanceof operator and the getClass method. Create an inheritance hierarchy out of custom classes. Then, practice using up-casting and down-casting on your objects to explore the relationship between variable types, object types, and inheritance. By the time you're finished, you'll clearly understand how inheritance is a powerful mechanism for code re-use and modeling is-a relationships in Java.

Runtime polymorphism involves variables of a base class containing objects of a derived class. Java uses dynamic binding to ensure that such variables are a powerful mechanism for writing clean, extensible, and correct code. This course takes you through the use of these advanced Java processes and mechanisms. Examine how constructors work with inheritance, including the order of constructor invocation, the role of base and derived class constructors, and the super keyword. Learn about runtime polymorphism and how this process of determining which implementation of a method to invoke at runtime is known as dynamic method dispatch. As you advance, use compile-time polymorphism in Java through method overloading. By the end of this course, you'll have a solid grasp of constructor invocation and both runtime and compile-time polymorphism in Java.

Method overriding is a way in which a derived class can redefine - and override - the implementation of a method already defined in a base class. By overriding only those methods you absolutely need to and relying on the base class implementations for all others, you get a lot done with relatively little new code. Use this course to learn how to carry out this technique. Explore the somewhat surprising behavior of static methods and the phenomenon known as hiding. Use the final keyword to mark member variables, member functions, and even entire classes. Use the abstract keyword to indicate a given method is not implemented. Study the semantics of the access modifiers public, private, protected, and package-private. When you're done, you'll recognize how overriding differs from hiding, the semantics of access modifiers, and how abstract classes are used.

An interface is effectively a class in which all methods are public and abstract by default. Interfaces are ubiquitous in Java libraries and frameworks because they're such a great way of defining APIs. Use this course to learn how to get the most out of these abstract classes. Explore how a class can implement an interface and how Java supports multiple inheritance of interfaces, even though multiple inheritance of other base classes is disallowed. Move on to examine a case study that brings together the different aspects of inheritance used in this course and through which you'll implement your own class loader to load a Java .class file. By the end of this course, you'll be able to use interfaces to define and implement APIs as well as inheritance for advanced Java tasks, such as implementing your own custom class loader.

Most Java developers use a full-fledged IDE to build complex Java applications. However, there will be many occasions where you need to test snippets of Java code quickly or build a small script without the overhead of having to develop, compile, and execute programs. This is where JShell comes in. In this course, practice using JShell to run snippets of Java code and get immediate results. Use various features of JShell, from the declaration of functions, available feedback modes, and the auto-complete feature. Define a class in various iterations until you're satisfied with its behavior. Then, compile several snippets of previously run Java code to build a JShell script that reads data from one file, transforms it, and writes it into another file. When you're done with this course, you'll be able to use JShell to write your Java programs.

Final Exam: Java Novice will test your knowledge and application of the topics presented throughout the Java Novice track of the Skillsoft Aspire Java Novice to Javanista Journey.