This book develops the object-oriented programming skills of experienced programmers (at the Junior, Senior or above level) by showing how to use Java 2 (the latest release of Sun's Java platform), and by providing a complete understanding of the philosophy behind Java 2. It starts out covering the language-independent concepts that are at the heart of the Java world, and then moves on to introduce Java through several example programs. Following this is an in-depth discussion on inheritance and polymorphism. Finally, the book concludes with material on important features of Java that are not object-oriented.