Texts

This semester we'll use several ``textbooks'':

• Watts Humphrey's Introduction to the Personal Software Process, which some of you used last semester. I will not give specific reading assignments in this book, but expect you to finish it on your own by the end of the semester.
• Bruce Eckel's Thinking in Java. I used this textbook for all of last spring's class, but this semester I'm only using a chapter or two of it; accordingly, I haven't ordered it through the bookstore, but will simply point you to the on-line version.
• David Flanagan's Java in a Nutshell. This is not really a textbook, but a reference book: it doesn't explain things in as much detail as a ``teach-yourself-Java'' book would, but it gives you the information you need in a clear, concise package. Since professional computer scientists have to learn a new language every year or two, you should start getting used to learning a language from this sort of book.
• Occasional reference to How to Design Programs, the on-line textbook from last semester.
• On-line documentation for Java's predefined classes.

Since the Flanagan book is so concise, you won't have to read fifty pages a week, but the reading assignments I do assign will be dense, and slow going. So be sure to budget enough time in your weekly schedule to read the material carefully and understand it completely.

You are responsible for everything in the reading assignments, whether or not I discuss it in a lecture. You are also responsible for checking my class Web page and the WebBoard at least once a week or so for assignments, corrections to assignments, solutions to assignments, etc..