Many times when you are reviewing code, you find references to objects with which you are unfamiliar. Java Documentation (i.e. Java Docs) an be particularly useful.
While it is true that you can usually just do a search in your favorite search engine, the Java Docs are the official documentation.
Blue J is a free IDE that is intended to be a learning tool.
In the late nineties, Michael Kölling developed a pedagogical language and environment called Blue as part of his PhD work. BlueJ is a port of Blue to Java, and was first released in 1999. Thanks to generous support from Sun Microsystems (and more recently Oracle), BlueJ development and support has continued since then. Initially based just in Australia, the team spread to the UK and then to Denmark when Michael moved there. First the Danish team, and then the Australian team, moved to the UK where they all now work in the Computing Education Research Group at the University of Kent.
Download: BlueJ
Check out this link to various videos that are built using Blue J itself.
This lab is a free project from the Blue J team that will be used to introduce concepts of Object Oriented Programming (OOP).
Download: Lab 1
This lab requires you to begin designing the base objects that will be used for a Vet Clinic application. You should put some time and effort into waht objects you may need, waht fields each object may need, and what methods should be created.
Each class should contain fields and methods that are relevant to itself.
This lab requires you to take your existing design and create the actual objects.
There is a starting project that you may want to start with, though you are free to create all your own classes too.
In either case, you will need to meet the requirements of the lab as defined in the lab assignment.
Download: Lab 3
This lab continues to explore the use of basic data structures and conditional statements and introduces inheritance, static class variables, and constants
There is a starting project that you may want to start with, though you are free to create all your own classes too.
In either case, you will need to meet the requirements of the lab as defined in the lab assignment.
Download: Lab 4
Occasionally, you will have to work with people on projects and share code.
The code contained in this download has been updated and should be included in your version of the lab.
Download: Lab 4 Updated
Testing is important, and BlueJ offers some really good features for testing.
Download: Sample Unit Tests