You should have covered at least chapters 1-4 in CS-95. We will cover material from chapters 5-12 and 17-18 in this course.
One thing I know about the new edition is that it will come with a CD that has a copy of the current Java Development Kit on it, as well as the Inprise JBuilder 3 Integrated Development Environment. That alone may make buying the new book worth your while.
You will be required to work with version 1.2 of the Java Development Kit (JDK 1.2), also known as Java 2, this term. You can download a free copy from Sun's website if you need it for off-campus work.
| Item | Weight |
|---|---|
| Quizzes | 25% |
| Exams | 75% |
Here is how this works: Each assignment has a "due date" (a week before each exam) and a "cutoff date" (the day of the exam). If you submit a copy of the assignment by midnight of the due date, I will provide you with feedback on your code before the exam. The feedback will include comments on your coding and documentation style as well as help with finding any bugs you were unable to resolve. If you submit the project between the due date and the cutoff date, I will provide you with whatever (limited) feedback I have time for.
Whether you hand assignments in or not will not affect your grade in the course, so there is no purpose served by submitting any code that you did not actually write yoursef.
This is a new grading policy for the course, starting with the Fall, 1999 semester. The idea is to eliminate the problem of cheating on projects that has existed in the past, while providing you with the code-writing practice and feedback that are critical for mastering the material in the course. Because it is a new policy, I reserve the right to modify it during the term if necessary.
Expensive, ($56) but supplies complete reference material for the classes in the java.io, java.lang, java.lang.reflect, java.math, java.net, java.text, java.util, and java.util.zip packages. Includes good explanations and instructive sample code.
As above for the classes in the java.applet, java.awt, java.beans, java.awt.event, java.awt.image, java.awt.peer, and java.awt.datatransfer packages.
This is a gem of a book, and at $20 for 860 pages, it's a great deal. It gives you the signature of every member of every class, for every version of the JDK. Unfortunately, except for a lot of nifty "examplets" (snippets of code that show you how to do standard things, like process command line arguments, or open a web page from within a program), there are no explantations. This book is designed for people who already know what they are doing and need a convenient place to look things up quickly. There should be an apostrophe in the title, either "Developer's" or "Developers'".
Note: The JDK comes with complete documentation for all classes in all packages, but does not include good explanations or instructive sample code the way the first two books do, and it isn't as easy to carry around as the Almanac. But it's free. Use the file/open menus in your web browser to open the fileindex.htmlin...\jdk1.1.7\docsto get started. (Look for "Core API.")
A very well-done tutorial book on how to program using Java. Concentrates on the important parts of the language, and has good jokes.
I haven't looked at these as much as the van der Linden book, but the folks at Prentice Hall tell me that the Core Java books sell much better than the Just Java book. So a lot of other people must think they are good, which is good enough reason to give them serious consideration.
This is the definitive source for the Java language. It's very well-written, very clear, and has a great index (try looking up "self-reference"). But it is designed for understanding the design of the language, not for learning how to program.