Chapter 3. Fundamental Programming Structures in Java

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• A Simple Java Program

• Comments

• Data Types

• Variables

• Operators

• Strings

• Input and Output

• Control Flow

• Big Numbers

• Arrays

At this point, we are assuming that you successfully installed the JDK and were able to run the sample programs that we showed you in Chapter 2. It's time to start programming. This chapter shows you how the basic programming concepts such as data types, branches, and loops are implemented in Java.

Unfortunately, in Java you can't easily write a program that uses a GUI you need to learn a fair amount of machinery to put up windows, add text boxes and buttons that respond to them, and so on. Because introducing the techniques needed to write GUI-based Java programs would take us too far away from our goal of introducing the basic programming concepts, the sample programs in this chapter are "toy" programs, designed to illustrate a concept. All these examples simply use a shell window for input and output.

Finally, if you are an experienced C++ programmer, you can get away with just skimming this chapter: concentrate on the C/C++ notes that are interspersed throughout the text. Programmers coming from another background, such as Visual Basic, will find most of the concepts familiar and all of the syntax very different you should read this chapter very carefully.

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