This set of labs should help you firm up your knowledge of programming basics and some basic background information any programmer should know.
Do Programming Exercise P1.1.
Do Programming Exercise P1.2.
Do Programming Exercise P1.3.
Do either Programming Exercise P1.5 or P1.6. Make your printlns as re-usable as possible so that you can take advantage of Copy-Paste. (Later we'll use this type of skill to re-use functions we've written.)
Do Programming Exercise P1.7.
Do Programming Exercises P1.8. In addition, write a program Sum10Reciprocals that computes the sum of the reciprocals 1/1 + 1/2 + ... + 1/10. This is harder than it sounds. Try writing the program and check the result. The program's result isn't likely to be correct. Then write the denominators as floating-point numbers, 1.0, 2.0, ... 10.0, and run the program again. Can you explain the difference in the results? We will explore this phenomenon in Chapter 4.
Do Programming Exercises P1.9 & P1.10 as well as Programming Project 1.1. (Do you notice any similarities?)
This lab set is worth (Level 3.5).
You can add (Level 1) by using only two helper String variables for your program from P1.5 or P1.6. This version should be in a separate program. (Making this a separate program file should help you to see both the similarities and the differences in simply re-using printlns and having String helpers which can produce re-usable results. i.e. Is the String version shorter or longer? Which lends itself more easily to debugging and/or maintenance? Etc.)
You can add (Level 2) by creating a single helper function for your program from P1.5 or P1.6. This version should be in a separate program. (Making this a separate program file should help you to see both the similarities and the differences in simply re-using printlns and having a function which can produce re-usable results. i.e. Is the function version shorter or longer? Which lends itself more easily to debugging and/or maintenance? Etc.) (Tip: for more on writing functions, see Chapter 3; specifically Sections 2 and 5.)
(Note: since each of the two options above create separate programs rather than modifying the original, you can do them both at the same time!)
You can do Programming Exercise P1.11 for an additional (Level 0.5). (Note that this is not terribly graphical, but I felt it crossed a line.)