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Bruce Eckel’s Thinking in Java Contents | Prev | Next Java goes out of its way to guarantee that any variable is properly initialized before it is used. In the case of variables that are defined locally to a method, this guarantee comes in the form of a compile-time error. So if you say: void […]

Bruce Eckel’s Thinking in Java Contents | Prev | Next garbage collection Programmers know about the importance of initialization, but often forget the importance of cleanup. After all, who needs to clean up an int? But with libraries, simply “letting go” of an object once you’re done with it is not always safe. Of course, […]

Bruce Eckel’s Thinking in Java Contents | Prev | Next One of the important features in any programming language is the use of names. When you create an object, you give a name to a region of storage. A method is a name for an action. By using names to describe your system, you create […]

Bruce Eckel’s Thinking in Java Contents | Prev | Next with the constructor You can imagine creating a method called initialize( ) for every class you write. The name is a hint that it should be called before using the object. Unfortunately, this means the user must remember to call the method. In Java, the class […]

Bruce Eckel’s Thinking in Java Contents | Prev | Next and cleanup As the computer revolution progresses, “unsafe” programming has become one of the major culprits that makes programming expensive. Two of these safety issues are initialization and cleanup. Many C bugs occur when the programmer forgets to initialize a variable. This is especially true […]

Bruce Eckel’s Thinking in Java Contents | Prev | Next Java uses all of C’s execution control statements, so if you’ve programmed with C or C++ then most of what you see will be familiar. Most procedural programming languages have some kind of control statements, and there is often overlap among languages. In Java, the […]

Bruce Eckel’s Thinking in Java Contents | Prev | Next An operator takes one or more arguments and produces a new value. The arguments are in a different form than ordinary method calls, but the effect is the same. You should be reasonably comfortable with the general concept of operators from your previous programming experience. […]

Bruce Eckel’s Thinking in Java Contents | Prev | Next Like a sentient creature, a program must manipulate its world and make choices during execution. In Java you manipulate objects and data using operators, and you make choices with execution control statements. Java was inherited from C++, so most of these statements and operators will […]

Bruce Eckel’s Thinking in Java Contents | Prev | Next The unofficial standard in Java is to capitalize the first letter of a class name. If the class name consists of several words, they are run together (that is, you don’t use underscores to separate the names) and the first letter of each embedded word […]

Bruce Eckel’s Thinking in Java Contents | Prev | Next There are two types of comments in Java. The first is the traditional C-style comment that was inherited by C++. These comments begin with a /* and continue, possibly across many lines, until a */. Note that many programmers will begin each line of a […]

Bruce Eckel’s Thinking in Java Contents | Prev | Next Finally, here’s the program. [15] It prints out information about the system that it’s running on using various methods of the System object from the Java standard library. Note that an additional style of comment is introduced here: the ‘ //’, which is a comment […]

Bruce Eckel’s Thinking in Java Contents | Prev | Next There are several other issues you must understand before seeing your first Java program. Name visibility A problem in any programming language is the control of names. If you use a name in one module of the program, and another programmer uses the same name […]