Prerequisite Knowledge

Before continuing further, I want to take time and clarify what the course expects you to come into the course ready to do. While most UVA students in this course will be coming from CS 2100, some people may be coming from other programming backgrounds.

This page is meant to briefly summarize what you are expected to know and be comfortable with in the Java programming language. This means both being able to read code and write code that uses the following tools and techniques.

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Contents

• Prerequisite Knowledge
  • Control Flow
  • Functions
  • Classes
  • Object Orientation
  • Exception Handling
  • Example Code

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Control Flow

• You should be very comfortable with if, else, and else if
  • You should also be aware of switch statements. Example:

    public String getDayName(int dayIndex){
        switch(day) {
            case 0:
                return "Sunday";
            case 1:
                return "Monday";
            ...
            case 6:
                return "Saturday";
            default:
                throw new IllegalDayException();
        }
    }
    

• You should be very comfortable with for and while loops
  • for(int i = 0; i < max_number; i++)
  • for(Student student : listOfStudents)
  • while(x > 0)
  • How to detect and prevent infinite loops.

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Functions

You should be very comfortable writing functions in Java, and understand:

• Return types, including void
• Input parameters
• Local and global scope
• Return value
• Side Effects
• How to test functions via “main-method” testing

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Classes

You should be very comfortable with Java classes

• Using pre-defined Java classes, like String and ArrayList
• Writing your own Java classes
• The difference between a class and an instance
• Methods and fields
  • Getters and setters
• Constructors
  • Using constructors with the new keyword
  • Writing constructors
• The static keyword and what it means
• Class field and method visibility with public and private keywords

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Object Orientation

You should be familiar with:

• The Java interface and implements keywords
  • You should be aware of the interfaces
    • Java Collections interfaces, like List, Set and Map
    • Comparable<E>
    • Comparator<E>
    • Runnable
• The Java extends and abstract keywords
• The Java Object class
  • Object class methods like equals(Object o), toString(), and hashCode()
• Using runtime polymorphism, such as:

  List<String> words = new ArrayList<>();
  

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Exception Handling

You should be familiar with:

• Common Java Exceptions and what they mean, like:
  • IndexOutOfBoundsException
  • NullPointerException
  • IllegalArgumentException
  • ArithmeticException
  • IllegalStateException
  • ClassCastException
• Java checked exceptions
  • FileNotFoundException
  • IOException
  • Exception
• How to create your own Exceptions
• try-catch-finally blocks

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Example Code

Look at this example Java code on Github. This code has 4 classes, which I encourage you to look at in this order:

1. Student.java
2. Enrollment.java
3. Main.java
4. StudentNameComparator.java

You should be able to understand all of this code before we dive into our course material. This includes understanding what each class does and how each class interacts with each other.

You should be able to download these Java files, put them into a project in your IDE of choice, and run the Main.java program, and you should be able to understand why the output displays what it does.

Note that, in your IDE, you’ll have to add the code to a package called “example” This can be done by right-clicking on your source code folder (typically “src”) and going to New -> Package. Then, simply make a package called “example”, and drop the downloaded files in there. We will talk about packages, and why we have them, soon.

As we go further in the class, you’ll learn how to “clone” the Github Repository this code is in, as well as “build” it in order to run the code as is.

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