Along the way, this book presents all of the critical skills that you need to move on to web or mobile development with Java. It presents object-oriented features like inheritance, interfaces, and polymorphism in a way that's both understandable and useful in the real world. It covers the most important features introduced in Java 8 such as lambda expressions and the new date/time API. It provides realistic sample applications that put these skills into context. It provides exercises that you can use to gain valuable hands-on experience. And it's all done in the distinctive Murach style that has been training professional programmers for over 40 years.