Fundamentals of Java™: AP* Computer Science Essentials, Fourth Edition covers all of the AP requirements for Computer Science Exam A.
This text is intended for a complete course in programming and problem solving. It covers the material of typical Computer Science 1 courses at the undergraduate level, but it is intended for the high school audience. It covers all the A-level Advanced Placement (AP) Java topics.
We present six major aspects of computing, some in standalone chapters and others spread across several chapters:
Programming Basics. This deals with the basic ideas related to solving problems with computers, including primitive data types, control structures, methods, algorithm development, and complexity analysis.
Object-Oriented Programming. OOP is today’s dominant programming paradigm. All the essentials of this subject are covered.
Data and Information Processing. Fundamental data structures are discussed. These include strings, arrays, files, and lists. The general concept of abstract data type is introduced, and complexity analysis is used to evaluate the running times of different implementations of algorithms.
Software Development Life Cycle. Rather than isolate software development techniques in one or two chapters, the book deals with them throughout in the context of numerous case studies.
Graphical User Interfaces and Event-Driven Programming. Many books at this level restrict themselves to character-based terminal I/O. The reason is simple. Graphical user interfaces and event-driven programming usually are considered too complex for beginning students.
In this book, we circumvent the complexity barrier and show how to develop programs with graphical user interfaces with almost the same ease as their terminal-based counterparts.
Web Basics. The programming of Web pages with HTML and applets is introduced.