Chapter 1

Vocabulary

• behavior: Any action that may be taken by an object
• character: A distinct elementary symbol, often corresponding to a single keyboard keystroke; letters, digits, punctuation marks, spaces and tabs are all examples of characters.
• class: a category of objects that share the same behavior.
• code: A section of text written in some programming language such as Java
• common behavior: The behavior shared by objects in the same class. It is this behavior that defines the class.
• compiler: A program that translates code written in a high-level programming language into the machine
• execute: To carry out instructions of the program code.
• file: A collection of information that has a name and that can be stored on a disk of a computer system.
• identifier: A sequence of characters which may be used as a name in a JAVA program. An identifier typically consists of a alphabetic characters (A-Z, a-z) followed by zero or more alphanumeric characters (A-Z, a-z, 0-9).
• instance: a particular object of a class
• interpreter: A program that directly carries out the statements of a high-level programming language.
• JAVA: The name of one of the most recent and popular programming languages also the one used in this class/course.
• keyword: A word with a special, predefined meaning in JAVA language.
• message: The mechanism by which an object's behavior is invoked,. A message consists of the name of the behavior along with further details.
• model: A representation of something. Models are usually simpler than the object they are representing; they contain only those aspects relevant to the use of the model.
• object: An entity in JAVA that models something; a member of a class.
• program: A JAVA text that can be compiled and executed.
• programming language: A specialized language for writing programs.
• receiver: An object to which a message is sent.
• reference: A value or expression that refers to an object, thereby allowing us to send messages to the object.
• responsibility: The set of behaviors that a class provides.
• statement: A sentence of the JAVA programming language. A statement represents an action to be carried out.
• string: A group of characters written between double quotes.

Review Questions

1. Can an object belong to more than one class?
2. What is a message composed of?
3. What is the importance of proper indentation? What about the program comments?
4. Describe the development process of a program from its creation through its execution.
5. What are the advantages of the JAVA bytecode?

* The questions in blue italics correspond to topics not yet covered in class.