When to introduce objects in teaching Java

With the move from procedural to object oriented programming (OOP), the number of concepts and programming techniques have widened, but the time allotted to teach an introduction to programming course is still the same. In this paper, we discuss the strategies to merge the OOP concepts with algorithms. We propose a balanced approach in which we start with objects from the very beginning and emphasize problem solving techniques and design throughout the course. This paper lays out a possible order of topics and the methodology to teach Java programming in the object oriented way. In addition, we discuss integrated environments in which Java can be taught, such as BlueJ, DrJava, and JBuilder.