Programming Fundamentals Using Java: A Game Application Approach

Designed as a Java textbook for the introductory programming course, this book uses game programming as a central pedagogical tool to improve student engagement, learning outcomes, and retention.

The game programming is incorporated into the text in a way that does not compromise the amount of material traditionally covered in a basic programming or advanced Java programming course, and permits instructors who are not familiar with game programming and computer graphic concepts to realize the pedagogical advantages of using game programming.

The book assumes the reader has no prior programming experience.

Features: material in the book is in compliance with the forthcoming ACM/IEEE 2013 computer science curriculum guidelines; includes material on programming of mobile applications and several simulations that graphically depict unseen runtime processes such as the construction and destruction of objects, the passing of parameters, dynamic creation of an array of objects, polymorphic method invocations, and backtracking using recursion; and, instructor's resources available upon adoption.