This is a first course in Computer Science using the programming language Java. It covers the fundamentals of programming and of computer science.

For maximum benefit, go though these notes interactively, thinking about and answering the question at the bottom of each page. There are about 20 pages per chapter. If you spend about 3 minutes per page each chapter will take about 60 minutes, or longer if you copy and run some of the programs. If you are a beginning programmer, plan on spending more than a month with this.

These notes assume that you have the Java version 5.0 or later from Sun Microsystems, Inc. at java.sun.com and a text editor such as Notepad. They may be used with more sophisticated environments, as well.