Sharpen your Java skills and boost your potential as an IT specialist. This book introduces you to the basic Java features and APIs needed to prepare for a career in programming and development.

You'll first receive an introduction to Java and then explore language features ranging from comments though exception/error handling, focusing mainly on language syntax and a few select syntax-related APIs. This constitutes the heart of the book, and you'll use these building blocks to construct simple Java programs, and learn where Java's implementations of expressions (and operators), and statements diverge from other languages. The final few chapters tour some additional APIs such as the Math class, related types, String and StringBuffer, and System.

Along the way you'll discover some interesting programs, such as Graph (a sine/cosine wave-plotting application) and WC (a word-counting application). Two appendixes provide quick references to Java's supported reserved words, and to Java's supported operators. Equipped with this knowledge, Learn Java Fundamentals will provide you the pathway to explore additional APIs on your own, and increase your Java awareness.

What You'll Learn

• Understand the basics of Java applications and APIs
• Study language features such as comments, identifiers, variables, types, and literals.
• Explore operators, expressions, statements, and other key features such as classes, objects, class extension, and class abstraction.

Who This Book Is For

Developers, programmers, and students with little or no Java experience

Jeff Friesen is a freelance teacher and software developer with an emphasis on Java. In addition to authoring several books on Java and Android for Apress such as Java I/O, NIO, and NIO.2 Java Threads and the Concurrency Utilities, Jeff has written numerous articles on Java and other technologies for JavaWorld, informIT, Java.net, SitePoint, and other web sites. Jeff can be contacted via his web site at JavaJeff.ca or via LinkedIn (JavaJeff)