As professors at Minnesota State University, the authors developed this book after realizing the need for a Java programming book specifically intended for engineering students. Java Programming for Engineers offers basic programming skills that can be applied in the engineering field. The tutorial uses the personal computer as a development platform and assumes no prior programming experience or knowledge. The only skills expected of the reader are basic keyboarding and user-level familiarity with the PC. It offers supplementary materials through the CRC Web site.
This book about Java programming is designed to address the needs of engineers,
scientists, and technology professionals in general. In identifying
our target audience we have made several assumptions:
1. Our readers are not likely to use Java to develop applications of major complexity.
Instead, we envision that the programs would be relatively small
and specialized towards the solution of a particular problem set of a technological
field.
2. Our audience is more concerned with the solution of numerical problems
than with text processing or the crunching of alphabetic data.
3. The typical development environment consists of a single programmer or a
small programming team.
4. Most of the programs will be used by an individual or by a small technical
group.
5. The programs and applications will not be marketed to the public at large.
Based on these assumptions we have focused our attention on those
topics in Java programming that are of greater interest to our audience.
At the same time, we have minimized the coverage of topics that are of
less concern to the typical engineer-programmer.
On the other hand, Java is a general-purpose programming language;
therefore, it cannot be easily partitioned for the convenience of a particular
interest group. Java programmers must deal with data types, operators
and keywords, methods, classes, input and output, error handling,
and a host of other necessary topics. This language core is necessary
whatever the purpose of the application.