Even the most complicated classes in Java can be flattened down to nothing more than the set of primitive data types they represent. But primitive types aren’t objects, and that presents a problem.

Sometimes it’s nice to format the output of a console based Java program in a friendly way. The java.lang package has no built-in table generators, but you can easily present data in a chart ... about ...

For example, we might create ... These are referred to as “primitive data types” as they are built right into the functioning of Java and can’t be broken down any further.