Spring Semester 2002

Lecture Notes Two: Algorithms. Programs. Mechanics of implementation in Java.
Before we look at the mechanics of implementing computations let us consider the planning process that precedes the implementation. If you can't give instructions for someone to solve a problem by hand, there is no way the computer can magically solve the problem.
The computer can only do what you do by hand. It just does it faster, and it doesn't get bored or exhausted. I'd like to see an example.
OK, let's consider the following investment problem:
You put $10,000 into a bank account that earns 5% interest per year. Interest is compounded annually. How many years does it take for the account balance to be double the original?
One could solve this problem by hand.
Sure, let's do that. After the first year you earn $500 (5% of $10,000). The interest gets added to your bank account and your balance becomes $10,500.00. Next year, the interest is $525 (5% of $10,500)... ... and your balance is $11,025.
You can keep going that way and build a table:
Year Balance
0 $10,000.00 $10,000.00
1 $10,000.00 + 0.05 * $10,000 = $10,500.00
2 $10,500.00 + 0.05 * $10,500.00 = $11,025.00
3 $11,025.00 + 0.05 * $11,025.00 = $11,576.25
4 $11,576.25 + 0.05 * $11,576.25 = $12,155.06
... ...
You keep going until the balance goes over $20,000.00 and when it does you look into the "Year" column and you have the answer.
Of course, carrying out this computation is intensely boring. Yes, but the fact that a computation is boring or tedious is irrelevant to a computer. Computers are very good at carrying out repetitive calculations quickly and flawlessly.
What is important to the computer is the existence of a systematic approach for finding the solution. The answer can be found just by following a series of steps that involves no guesswork.
Here's such a series of steps:
Step 1 Start with the table:

Year Balance
0 $10,000.00

Step 2 Repeat steps 2a, 2b, 2c while the balance is less than $20,000.00

Step 2a. Add a new row to the table.
Step 2b. In column 1 of the new row, labeled "Year", put one more than the preceding year value.
Step 2c. In column 2 of the new row, labeled "Balance", place the value of the preceding balance value, multiplied by 1.05 (1 + 5%)

Step 3 Read the last number in the year column and report it as the number of years required to double the investment.
Of course, these steps are not yet in a language that a computer can understand, but you will learn soon how to formulate them in Java. Is this collection of steps an algorithm?
Yes, because the description is unambigous... There are precise instructions what to do in every step and where to go next. There is no room for guesswork or creativity.
... executable, and terminating. Because each step can be carried out in practice, and the computation can be shown to come to an end: with every step, the balance goes up by at least $500.00, so eventually it must reach $20,000.00
Now we start looking at the mechanics of implementing computations in Java.
Let's analyze our first program. 
public class Hello 
{ public static void main(String[] args) 
  { System.out.println("Hello, World!"); 
  } 
}
You know that you should make a new program file and call it Hello.java, enter the program instructions, then compile and run the program. That's clear, the contents is more intriguing.
It is composed of words and symbols separated by spaces. The words and symbols are important and atomic: they're like words and symbols in an English sentence. Bring me a glass of water!
Yes, but it's a lot stricter. Java is case-sensitive. You must enter upper- and lowercase letters exactly as they appear in the program listing. On the other hand Java has free-form layout. Spaces and line breaks are not important, except to separate words.
However, good taste dictates that you lay out your programs in readable fashion, so you should follow the layout in the program listing. Now that we've seen the program, it's time to understand its makeup.
The part in blue introduces a class, called Hello. 
public class Hello 
{ public static void main(String[] args) {
   System.out.println("Hello, World!"); 
  }
}
In Java, classes are the central organizing mechanism for code.
You can't do anything in Java without defining at least a class. That is why we introduce the Hello class as the holder of the main method.
Java, like most programming languages, requires that all program statements must be placed inside methods. A method is a collection of programming instructions that describe how to carry out a particular task.
The part in blue further defines the main method. 
public class Hello 
{ public static void main(String[] args) {
    System.out.println("Hello, World!"); 
  }
}
Every Java application must have a main method.
Most Java programs contain other methods beside main, but it will take us a while to learn how to write other methods. For the time being, simply put all instructions that you want to have executed inside the main method of a class.
I have them here marked in blue. 
public class Hello 
{ public static void main(String[] args) {
    System.out.println("Hello, World!");  
  }
}
The instructions or statements in the body of the main method (that is, the statements inside the curly braces { }) are executed one by one. Note that each statement ends in a semicolon (;).
Our method has a single statement: 
System.out.println("Hello, World!");
Yes, but it, too, has a structure. The statement is supposed to print a line of text. I presume the text is enclosed by double quotes (").
Yes, a sequence of characters in quotation marks is called a string. You must enclose the contents of the string inside quotation marks so that the compiler considers them plain text and does not try to interpret them as program instructions. To print the text you call a method println as if you'd call Papa John's for a large pizza. But which Papa John's? You need to precisely locate it. Suppose you say: the one on 3rd Street. But which 3rd: most towns have a 3rd Street. So you need to add Bloomington, and then IN.
All of this is apparent in their telephone number:
812 323 PAPA
System out println

From this analogy it looks like System contains out which contains println.

Yes, we call the println method that is part of the out object, that is part of the System class, and we pass it the string that we wanted printed. So that's what the parentheses are for...
Yes, in fact that's how we tell that out is merely data, and not a method: method names are always followed by a pair of parentheses. Why is System uppercased and out lowercased?
This is only a convention, that object variables (or names) start with a lowercase letter, while classes names should start with an upper case. Using this convention is strongly encouraged, as part of the style guide. So let's summarize: designers of the Java libraries defined a System class in which they've put useful objects and methods. One of these objects is called out and it lets you access the terminal window (also called the standard output). To use the out object in the System class you must refer to it as System.out; it has a method inside it, by the name println which we can use, and so we do.
That's correct. Asking the computer to execute a method is also known as calling or invoking the method.
When we call a method we can pass it information in between parentheses. If we pass no information there will be an empty pair of parentheses. In this case we pass one string.
Have you looked at the exercises yet? What for?
How would you print 
Hello, "World"!
You need to escape the quotation marks inside the string with a backslash (\), like that: 
public class Hello 
{ public static void main(String[] args) {
    System.out.println("Hello, \"World\"!"); 
  }
}
It becomes harder to read, but it's also more precise. The computer won't mistake any of the two escaped double quotes as being the end of the string. What other escape sequences are there?
Since the backslash character is used as an escape character, it needs to be escaped itself, if we need it in output. Another escape sequence used ocasionally is \n which is the same as new line or line feed character. Are there any other things that we could pass to println for printing?
Yes, for example arithmetic expressions. Such as:
  • 3 + 4
  • (2.5 - 1) / 4
  • (3 + 4) * (2 - 5)
Yes. What's the asterisk (*) for? It's for multiplication, and / for division.
Very good. You could even "add" strings by listing them with a + between them. println will actually concatenate them (or string them together). OK, maybe I won't do that right away. What's the difference between println and print?
The out object contains a second method called print. You can see the difference between the two methods if you consider the following program: What does it do? 
public class Test 
{ public static void main(String[] args) 
  { System.out.println("Hello, "); 
    System.out.println("World! "); 
  } 
}
The println method prints a string or a number and then starts a new line. The print method does the same printing, without starting a new line afterwards.
I see... putting all of the things we've learned together I could write the same program as follows: 
public class Test 
{ public static void main(String[] args) 
  { System.out.print("Hello, \n"); 
    System.out.print("World! \n"); 
  } 
}
Yes, and in fact in many other ways. I won't count how many...

Last updated: Jan 9, 2002 by Adrian German for A201