THE Java™ Programming Language, Fourth Edition

Chapter 4. Interfaces

	“Conducting” is when you draw “designs” in the nowhere—with your stick, or with your hands—which are interpreted as “instructional messages” by guys wearing bow ties who wish they were fishing.
	--Frank Zappa

The fundamental unit of programming in the Java programming language is the class, but the fundamental unit of object-oriented design is the type. While classes define types, it is very useful and powerful to be able to define a type without defining a class. Interfaces define types in an abstract form as a collection of methods or other types that form the contract for that type. Interfaces contain no implementation and you cannot create instances of an interface. Rather, classes can expand their own types by implementing ...