About the Course

Welcome to the course page of the Introduction to Programming course! This course provides an introduction to the Java Programming Language and will make you familiar with some of the concepts that are fundamental to functional and object-oriented programming languages.

This course page will act as the main reference for the course and contains practice assignments to make you familiar with the topics that are studied. You are able to test yourself on these assignments through the IntelliJ EduTools plugin. Completing these practice assignments will help you to become familiar with the language and train you on how to tackle problems by means of computer programs.

Course Menu

Software

The software that we recommend you to use for this course for programming is called IntelliJ IDEA. This is a so-called Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for writing Java code. IntelliJ is widely used throughout academia and industry and thus provideS you a good basis for any future programming that you do. Instructions on how to set-up IntelliJ on your own PC are given on this page. On university PC's, it will already be installed for use. Note that you are also allowed to use other programs to write Java code (like Eclipse), but we strongly advice you to install IntelliJ, which we will use for all video's and which you can use to check your code for the practice assignments.

Background Material

If you feel that you need some further background material, we advice the following book: Allen Downey, Chris Mayfield, Think Java: How to Think Like a Computer Scientist, ISBN: 9781492072508. Be aware that this is background material. You are not obliged to buy this and it will not be exam material either. As it once was said by Aristotle: "Programming is a skill best acquired by practice and example rather than from books." Note that a free e-book version of the book can be acquired through the university library. Moreover, a PDF version can be downloaded through this link.

Sessions and Support

Lectures, question hours and tutorials will be provided with learning the material. See an overview of the provided sessions on this page.