Java For Testers: Learn Java fundamentals fast

This book is for people who want to learn Java. Particularly people on a team that want to learn Java, but who aren’t going to be coding the main Java application i.e. Testers, Managers, Business Analysts, Front End Developers, Designers, etc.

If you already know Java then this book may not be for you.

This book is aimed at beginners. Designed to help the reader get started fast, the book is easy to follow, and has examples related to testing.

You can find the companion web site for the book at http://javafortesters.com

The book covers ‘just enough’ to get people writing tests and abstraction layers. For example, the book cover the basics of Inheritance, but doesn’t really cover Interfaces in detail. We explain the concept of Interfaces, because we need to know it to understand Collections, but not how to write them.

Why? Because the book covers enough to get you started, and working. But not overload the reader. Once you are on your way, and have gained some experience. You should have the basic knowledge to understand the additional concepts.

Why ‘for testers’?

Java Developers coding production applications in Java need to learn Java differently from other people on the team.

Throughout the author’s career, he has have written thousands of lines of Java code, but has rarely had to compile the code into an application. Yet, when we learn Java from most books, one of the first things we learn is ‘javac’ and the ‘main’ method and working from the command line. And this is confusing.

Most of the code the author writes is wrapped up in a JUnit @Test method.

The author has trained many people to write automation in Java, and everytime he has taught Java to testers or other people on the team, we start with a JUnit @Test method and run tests from the IDE.

Testers, and other people on the team use java differently. This book provides a different order and approach to learning Java.

You can find the source code for all examples and exercises used in the book over on github:

https://github.com/eviltester/javaForTestersCode

Table of Contents

Chapter One – Basics of Java Revealed
Chapter Two – Install the Necessary Software
Chapter Three – Writing Your First Java Code
Chapter Four – Work with Other Classes
Chapter Five – Working with Our Own Classes
Chapter Six – Java Classes Revisited: Constructors, Fields, Getter & Setter Methods
Chapter Seven – Basics of Java Revisited
Chapter Eight – Selections and Decisions
Chapter Nine – Arrays and For Loop Iteration
Chapter Ten – Introducing Collections
Chapter Eleven – Introducing Exceptions
Chapter Twelve – Introducing Inheritance
Chapter Thirteen – More About Exceptions
Chapter Fourteen – JUnit Explored
Chapter Fifteen – Strings Revisited
Chapter Sixteen – Random Data
Chapter Seventeen – Dates and Times
Chapter Eighteen – Properties and Property Files
Chapter Nineteen – Files
Chapter Twenty – Math and BigDecimal
Chapter Twenty One – Collections Revisited
Chapter Twenty Two – Advancing Concepts
Chapter Twenty Three – Next Steps
Appendix – IntelliJ Hints and Tips
Appendix – Exercise Answers