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.

About The Author

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.

Customer Reviews & Comments
This is the first of the books I've read that tries to teach computer science via Java to programming novices that I think actually does a good job. It is intended to introduce computing, including programming, to students with no prior programming experience. This book is full of interesting projects and programs such as splicing words into sentences, reversing sounds to make interesting effects, removing red eye from images, and writing programs to generate web pages from data in databases. There are also lessons and projects that create animations and movies using special effects similar to those found in the movies. This book is not just about programming to manipulate media. Media manipulation programs are hard to write, and can behave in unexpected ways. Thus, answering questions about speed, writing for testability, and other issues of program efficiency and software engineering are handled in the last two chapters of the book. When dealing with media, apparently the authors did a very good thing and did not have the student attempt to work with Sun's tragically abandoned Java Media Framework, which malfunctions to such a degree that it would discourage even an experienced programmer. Instead the author uses something called "MediaTools", which is in much better shape and is included on the CD along with the development environment, DrJava. With both the development and media-handling utilities already handled for the new programmer, he/she can concentrate on what is important - which is how to accomplish interesting tasks in Java while learning the basics of computer programming. I highly recommend this as a textbook for any introductory programming class. The reader won't be an expert Java programmer by the time they finish the book, but he/she will understand the basics of Java programming and know what questions need to be answered when embarking on the writing of a computer program in any language. The table of contents is as follows: 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