Taking an application-motivated approach, the text presents an abundance of games. Students must read through the whole chapter to understand all the features that are needed to implement the game. Most chapters start with a description of a game and then introduce different Java constructs for implementing the features of the game on need-to-use bases.

The text teaches students not only how to write code that works but also how to follow good software practices. All sample programs in the text strive to achieve low cohesion and high coupling the hallmarks of well-designed code. Many programs are refactored multiple times to achieve code that is easy to understand, reuse, and maintain.

The first part of the book covers basic programming techniques, such as conditional statements, loops, methods, arrays, and classes. The second part focuses on more advanced topics, including class inheritance, recursions, sorting algorithms, GUI programming, exception handling, files, and applets.