This five-week module is intended as an introduction to computer programming. The language you will use for this purpose is Java. This language, originally developed by Sun Microsystems and now owned by Oracle, has been one of the most widely used computer programming languages in the world for over a decade. It is best known for its use in association with the World Wide Web and the Internet, but over the next few weeks you will see that it can also be applied very effectively to scientific problems. Some big advantages of Java over other languages are that it is highly portable: Java programs run on most computer systems in use today; it is freely available; it is better integrated with graphics than other languages; it is relatively simple as it does not have the constraint of remaining backward compatible like older languages that have evolved; it is widely used, so Java programming is a marketable skill which you should find useful in many areas both inside and outside physics.
Java's portability means that you can use your programs on other types of computer without having to recompile them, and the program should behave in the same way regardless of the computer you are using. This is know as platform independence. It is for this reason Java has become widely used on the Internet.
These notes, example files, tips and up to date information about this course can be found at http://www.pp.rhul.ac.uk/~george/PH2150.