Clear Java

Clear Java is a beginner-oriented Java textbook by Shibata Toshihiro, associate professor at Fukuoka Institute of Technology in Japan; the original title is Shin・Meikai Java Nyumon (New Clear Introduction to Java). Following the illustrated style of the "Clear" textbook series, the book uses 284 diagrams and 258 runnable code snippets to take readers from "printing a line of text on screen" step by step to "independently writing object-oriented programs with inheritance, interfaces, and exception handling." The content is arranged in the order "write a sample program first, then run it to see the output, then explain why," so that abstract syntax rules land on runnable results. The book has 16 chapters, covering in turn the origins of Java and setting up the development environment, character output, variables and keyboard input, if and switch branching, do, while, and for loops and nested loops, primitive types, type conversion, and bitwise operations, arrays and multidimensional arrays, method definition, value passing, and overloading, classes, constructors, and instances, building a custom date class, class variables and class methods, packages and access control, class derivation and polymorphism, abstract classes, interfaces, characters, strings, and the String class, and finally exception handling. Small game examples such as number guessing, rock-paper-scissors, and mental arithmetic training are interspersed, so exercises are more than just printing symbols. The Japanese original won the Japan Society for Engineering Education Book Award, and the original series has sold over one million copies cumulatively; the Chinese edition is printed in two colors and suits complete beginners studying on their own and students using Java as their first programming language to build a foundation.