This book develops the object-oriented programming skills of experienced programmers (at the Junior, Senior or above level) by showing how to use Java 2 (the latest release of Sun's Java platform), and by providing a complete understanding of the philosophy behind Java 2. It starts out covering the language-independent concepts that are at the heart of the Java world, and then moves on to introduce Java through several example programs. Following this is an in-depth discussion on inheritance and polymorphism. Finally, the book concludes with material on important features of Java that are not object-oriented.

Presents the results of an investigation into the issues raised by the development of a compiler for APL, a very high level computer programming language. APL presents a number of novel problems for a compiler writer: weak variable typing, run time changes in variable shape, and a host of primitive operations. Through the integration of several recently developed compiler construction techniques, such as data flow analysis, and a novel and space efficient demand driven or lazy evaluation approach to code generation, the author has been able to produce a true compiler for the language while still maintaining the felxibility and ease that are the hallmarks of APL.