
1.1 Basic Computer Concepts 3
alive. It can be frustrating, however, when your program either doesn’t run
at all or produces the wrong output.
Writing correct programs is critical. Someone’s life or life savings may
depend on the correctness of your program. Reusing code helps in devel-
oping correct programs, but you must also master effective testing tech-
niques to verify that the output of your program is correct.
In this book, we’ll concentrate not only on the syntax of the Java language,
but also on basic programming techniques, good software engineering
principles, and effective testing techniques.
Before you can write programs, however, it’s important ...