Weekly Outcomes

Week 1

Java Fundamentals

• Be aware of the memory requirements and value ranges for primitive types
• Use mathematic operations to manipulate characters
• Interpret code in which automatic type conversions are present
• Use type casting to explicitly convert data types
• Explain the risks associated with explicit type casting
• Use increment and decrement operators
• Explain how pre- and post- increment/decrement operators differ in functionality
• Use short-circuit evaluation to avoid divide-by-zero and null-pointer exceptions

Inheritance

• Use inheritance in creating classes
• Explain why a class with a superclass other than object should make an explicit call to a constructor of the superclass if no default constructor is present in the superclass
• Define aggregation
• Define composition
• Use aggregation and composition within user defined classes
• Explain what is meant by "overriding a method"
• Make use of super reference to call a parent method from within a method that overrides it

Week 2

UML

• Read and understand UML class and sequence diagrams
• Implement source that meets the design specified in a UML class and sequence diagram

Week 3

Inheritance and Polymorphism

• Explain the role of the Object class
• Explain how automatic type promotion works with object references
• Override the equals() and toString() methods for user defined classes
• Explain the relationship between a reference type and the type of the object to which the reference points
• Explain the concept of polymorphism/dynamic binding
• Read code that uses inheritance and polymorphism and determine its output on execution
• Identify legal and illegal assignments of references to objects based on the reference type and object type.
• Explain what it means for a class to implement an interface
• Use the protected modifier in defining an inheritance hierarchy
• Describe when to use an abstract class
• Explain the concept of the Java interface
• Create an abstract method; describe the purpose of abstract methods
• Describe the differences between an abstract class and an interface

Week 4

Event-Driven Programming

• Explain the roles of event sources and event listeners in event-driven programming

GUI Components

• List at least three types of objects that can be contained in a JFrame object
• Modify the content pane of a JFrame object
• Design and implement a graphical user interface (GUI) programs using the JLabel and JTextField classes from the Java Swing package

Week 5

GUI Components

• Describe the differences between the AWT and Swing packages
• Differentiate between layout managers such as: FlowLayout, BorderLayout and GridLayout
• Use the layout managers listed above to arrange components on a content pane
• Design and implement a graphical user interface (GUI) programs using the JButton class

Event-Driven Programming

• Define a GUI class that is derived from JFrame and implements the ActionListener interface
• List the two types of objects required for event driven programming in Java
• Explain the role of "event source" objects and give examples of two classes whose instances are "event source" objects
• Explain the role of "event listener" objects and give examples of two classes whose instances are "event listener" objects
• Design and implement event handling methods to handle multiple Action Events
• Implement code to handle an action event from the JButton or JTextField Java Swing classes
• Explain the purpose of the argument passed to the actionPerformed() method
• Design and implement an ActionListener class
• Determine an event source from within an actionPerformed() method
• Describe at least two different ways of structuring ActionListener classes and discuss advantages and disadvantages of each
• Describe the differences between an inner class and a regular (non-inner) class
• Make use of inner classes to implement ActionListener classes
• Make use of anonymous inner classes to implement ActionListener classes

Week 6

GUI Components

• Use JPanel objects to embed layout managers within

Exception Handling

• Explain how exception handling increases the robustness of software
• Define exception; explain the concepts of catch and throw as they relate to exceptions
• Explain why Error exceptions should not be caught in application code
• For a given program and input condition, determine the control flow of a try-catch block
• Implement a method that catches an exception thrown by a class in the Java Standard Library
• Implement a method that uses a try-catch block and a repetition statement (i.e., loop) to validate user input
• Distinguish between checked and unchecked exceptions
• Explain the concept of exception propagation; explain the outcome if an exception is thrown and not caught by the program
• Explain the consequences of not handling a checked exception within a method where the checked exception occurs

Week 7

Exception Handling

• Use multiple catch blocks to customize the way different types of exceptions are handled
• Inspect a call stack trace displayed by an unhandled exception to determine what caused the exception to be thrown
• Use the throws clause to postpone when a checked exception is handled
• For a given program and input condition, determine the control flow of a try-catch block with and without the finally clause

Week 8

File Input and Output (I/O)

• Create a Java File object and associate it with a file on disk
• Determine if a File object exists
• Determine if a File object is a file or a directory
• Associate a low-level input (i.e., FileInputStream) or output (i.e., FileOutputStream) stream with a File object
• Describe how low-level file I/O works (i.e., reading or writing of byte data, importance of the sequence of data)
• describe how high-level (DataOutputStream and DataInputStream) file I/O works (i.e., methods for reading and writing of primitive data types, association with low-level stream, the importance of the sequence of data)
• Explain why it is important to close a stream when file operations are complete
• Explain what the PrintWriter class is used for
• Read text data from a file using Scanner objects
• Explain the difference between binary and text files
• Describe how object I/O (ObjectOutputStream and ObjectInputStream) works (i.e., methods for reading and writing of objects, association with low-level stream, the importance of the sequence of objects and type casting)
• Describe some of the important exceptions that the java file IO classes generate.