Think Java

Chapter 1. The Way of the Program

The goal of this book is to teach you to think like a computer scientist. This way of thinking combines some of the best features of mathematics, engineering, and natural science. Like mathematicians, computer scientists use formal languages to denote ideas, specifically computations. Like engineers, they design things, assembling components into systems and evaluating trade-offs among alternatives. And like scientists, they observe the behavior of complex systems, form hypotheses, and test predictions.

The single most important skill for a computer scientist is problem solving. It involves the ability to formulate problems, think creatively about solutions, and express solutions clearly and accurately. As it turns out, the process of learning to program is an excellent opportunity to develop problem solving skills. That’s why this chapter is called, “The way of the program”.

On one level you will be learning to program, a useful skill by itself. But on another level you will use programming as a means to an end. As we go along, that end will become clearer.

What Is Programming?

A program is a sequence of instructions that specifies how to perform a computation. The computation might be something mathematical, like solving a system of equations or finding the roots of a polynomial. It can also be a symbolic computation, like searching and replacing text in a document or (strangely enough) compiling a program. The details look different in different ...