Re: My first attempt at java code fails. OK, why please?

Mike Barnard wrote:


Ah, Summer Time! What we Yanks call "Daylight Savings Time", which causes
pedants to remind us that technically it's called "Daylight Saving Time".

It's the level of nitpickiness that is relevant. We humans get away with
"Daylight Savings Time" or "system.out"; when we make that kind of mistake in
source code all heck breaks loose.

Arne Vajh??j wrote:


Mike Barnard wrote:


There's more, when you're ready. By convention, Java case is not arbitrary,
though the language /per se/ largely permits it to be. You are free in theory
to name a class 'myclass' and a do-something method 'do_something()', but in
practice you'll make every professional Java programmer cringe. Few will be
polite enough not to tell you so.

Nor should they be.

People largely follow the Sun Java Coding Conventions
<http://java.sun.com/docs/codeconv/index.html>
There's some wiggle. People will tolerate either brace-placement variant, and
other varying allowances of style, but the basic naming rules are:

Use camel case - make compound words with each word part (except maybe the
first) capitalized, as in 'PileDriver' or 'makeSomethingHappen()'. Go ahead,
spell things out - cut-and-paste will save you back the few microergs of extra
typing energy that meaningful, unabbreviated names cost.

Type names (interfaces and classes) begin with an upper-case letter. You
don't need to put "Interface" or "Class" into the names, just the name of the
type or implementation itself. Example: 'List' and 'ArrayList', an interface
and a concrete implementation of that interface. Interfaces tend to name a
quality, like 'Serializable', 'Iterable'. They often have single-word names,
'Queue', sometimes double, like 'ResultSet'. Class names tend to show more
concreteness:
  'PriorityBlockingQueue<E> implements Queue<E>, Iterable<E>, ...'

Method and variable names begin with a lower-case letter.
  private int degree;
  public int size();
  public int remainingCapacity();

You don't use underscores.

With a major exception - constant variables.

A constant variables is either an enum value name or a variable that doesn't
change because it's 'final' and obeys certain compile-time rules of constancy.
  People think loosely of other kinds of final variable as "constants" also.

You convey constancy by spelling the name in all upper-case, using underscores
to separate word parts instead of camel case.

   protected static final int STANDARD_DEGREE = 17;
   public static final String MODULE_NAME = "Soyuz 17";
   private final Status BIRTH_STATUS = Status.INNOCENT;

Now it's easy to remember that 'System', a class, begins with upper case, and
'out', a static variable, with lower case, thus 'System.out'.

'print()', an instance method, begins with lower case, thus
'System.out.print(something)'

--
Lew