Chapters

This book was designed with one thing in mind: the way people learn the Java language.
Seminar audience feedback helped me understand which parts were difficult and needed
30 Thinking in Java www.BruceEckel.com
illumination. In the areas where I got ambitious and included too many features all at once,
I came to know – through the process of presenting the material – that if you include a lot of
new features, you need to explain them all, and this easily compounds the student’s
confusion. As a result, I’ve taken a great deal of trouble to introduce the features as few at a
time as possible.
The goal, then, is for each chapter to teach a single feature, or a small group of associated
features, in such a way that no additional features are relied upon. That way you can digest
each piece in the context of your current knowledge before moving on.
Here is a brief description of the chapters contained in the book, which correspond to
lectures and exercise periods in my hands-on seminars.