Language fundamentals

Navigate Language Fundamentals topic: Statements Conditional blocks Loop blocks Boolean expressions Variables Primitive Types Arithmetic expressions Literals Methods String Objects Keywords Packages Scope Arrays Mathematical functions Large numbers Random numbers Unicode Comments

Topics: Introduction Getting started Language fundamentals Classes and objects Collections Exceptions Concurrent Programming Javadoc & Annotations Designing user interfaces Swing Advanced topics Byte Code

The previous chapter "Getting started" was a primer course in the basic of understanding how Java programming works. Throughout the chapter, we tackled with a variety of concepts that included:

• Objects and class definitions;
• Abstract and data types;
• Properties;
• Methods;
• Class-level and method-level scopes;
• Keywords; and,
• Access modifiers, etc.

From this point on, we would be looking into the above mentioned concepts and many more in finer detail with a deeper and richer understanding of how each one of them works. This chapter on Language fundamentals introduces the fundamental elements of the Java programming language in detail. The discussions in this chapter would use the concepts we have already gathered from our previous discussions and build upon them in a progressive manner.

The Java programming syntax

In linguistics, the word syntax (which comes from Ancient Greek σύνταξις where σύν [syn] means "together", and τάξις [táxis] means "an ordering") refers to "the process of arranging things". It defines the principles and rules for constructing phrases and sentences in natural languages.

When learning a new language, the first step one must take is to learn its programming syntax. Programming syntax is to programming languages what grammar is to spoken languages. Therefore, in order to create effective code in the Java programming, we need to learn its syntax — its principles and rules for constructing valid code statements and expressions.

Java uses a syntax similar to the C programming language and therefore if one learns the Java programming syntax, they automatically would be able to read and write programs in similar languages — C, C++ and C#