Learning Java, 3rd Edition

Chapter 2. A First Application

Before diving into our full discussion of the Java language, let’s get our feet wet by jumping into some working code and splashing around a bit. In this chapter, we’ll build a friendly little application that illustrates many of the concepts used throughout the book. We’ll take this opportunity to introduce general features of the Java language and applications.

This chapter also serves as a brief introduction to the object-oriented and multithreaded aspects of Java. If these concepts are new to you, we hope that encountering them here in Java for the first time will be a straightforward and pleasant experience. If you have worked with another object-oriented or multithreaded programming environment, you should especially appreciate Java’s simplicity and elegance. This chapter is intended only to give you a bird’s eye view of the Java language and a feel for how it is used. If you have trouble with any of the concepts introduced here, rest assured they will be covered in greater detail later in the book.

We can’t stress enough the importance of experimentation as you learn new concepts here and throughout the book. Don’t just read the examples—run them. The source code for these examples and all of the examples in this book can be found on our web site at http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/learnjava3. Compile the programs and try them. Then, turn our examples into your examples: play with them, change their behavior, break them, fix them, and hopefully ...