The topic of this book is more efficient and effective programming practice. If students can learn how to apply abstraction, specification, and object-oriented design in constructing even small programs, they will have learned the methodology urgently needed today for component-based and object-oriented software engineering. The methodology, which specifically shows students how to decompose a programming problem into parts and then how to build a desired program from independent modules, is especially critical for larger programs, often worked on by teams. The book illustrates particular techniques with implementations in Java (a brief introduction to Java is included for those not already familiar with the language). Beginning with smaller programs, to make sure the basic methodology is understood, the book then shows how to apply the same techniques for high-quality programming-in-the-large.