New computer science students are far more motivated when they are creating programs they care about. Reflecting that insight, this complete first course in Java introduces each new concept in the context of programs that manipulate students’own sounds, pictures, web pages, and video: programs that help them communicate.

Mark Guzdial and Barbara Ericson draw on their innovative work at Georgia Tech, work that has significantly improved student success, and earned the recognition of the National Science Foundation. This book presents new techniques only after demonstrating why students need them to solve meaningful problems. Students can then run their digital media programs get immediate feedback that helps them stay on the right track.

Open-ended assignments are designed to motivate, promote creativity, and encourage collaboration and friendly competition, using the simple, intuitive, lightweight DrJava development environment. At the same time, students learn to create robust, efficient Java code for any IDE or platform. 

Skills include:

• fundamentals of object development 
• loops, arrays, and matrices 
• drawing with Java’s Graphics and Graphics2D classes
• generating HTML databases and using basic SQL queries 
• understanding and modifying algorithms 
• program performance and reliability

 A dual-platform CD-ROM (for Macintosh^® and Windows^®) includes raw media materials and programming source code for the book’s exercises and all necessary software, including Sun Microsystems’ Java 2 Platform, Standard Edition and more.

Mark Guzdial is a Full Professor at the College of Computing at Georgia Tech, member of the GVU Center, and Director of the Collaborative Software Laboratory. His Prentice Hall books include Squeak: Object-Oriented Design with Multimedia Applications; Squeak: Open Personal Computing and Multimedia; and Introduction to Computing and Programming in Python: A Multimedia Approach.

Barbara J. Ericson, is a highly-rated instructor for the College of Computing at Georgia Tech. She has taught continuing education and undergraduate courses for Georgia Tech. She authored continuing education courses on Java and Object-Oriented Analysis and Design. Her current position is the Director of CS Outreach for the Institute for Computing Education (ICE) which works to improve computing education at the secondary level in Georgia. An ACM member, Ericson has worked at several leading industrial research labs, including General Motors Research Labs and Bell Communications Research.

Preface iv

Contents xi

1 Introduction to Computer Science and Media Computation

2 Introduction to Java

3 Introduction to Programming

4 Modifying Pictures using Loops

5 Modifying Pixels in a Matrix

6 Conditionally Modifying Pixels

7 Drawing

8 Modifying all Samples in a Sound

9 Modifying Samples using Ranges

10 Combining and Creating Sounds

11 Creating Classes

12 Creating and Modifying Text

13 Making Text for the Web

14 Encoding, Manipulating, and Creating Movies

15 Speed

16 JavaScript

APPENDICES

A Quick Reference to Java

A.1 Variables

A.2 Method Declarations

A.3 Loops

A.4 Conditionals

A.5 Operators

A.6 String escapes

A.7 Classes

A.8 Fields

A.9 Constructors

A.10 Packages