mike.mainguy

A great many people are competent java developers, but have only a vague understanding of the difference between a "public static method", "public method", and the difference between a class and an object. As this was confusing to me at first, I thought I would give a quick overview. A class defines a template for what data and operations are available when you tell the JVM to create an object. So, for example: public class BlogPost { public String text = ""; public static BlogPost latest; public static BlogPost create(String input) { latest = new BlogPost(); latest.text = input; return latest; } public int getTextSize() { return text.length(); } } When you compile this class, it is creating a file that the java runtime can later use to enable programmers to load an object into memory that has a single attribute called "text" which is a reference to another o...

I don't consider myself a java expert by any measure, but there's a disturbing thing I've noticed. There are a LOT of people who claim to be "java developers", but they have zero clue what the "java collections framework" is. This post is designed for folks who keep getting stumped on interview questions or are mystified when someone starts talking about the difference between a Set and a List (for example). If you google "java collections framework for dummies" you'll find this link which has a more complete, if fairly dense explanation. I'm going to do you one better and give a rule of thumb that you can use without thinking about it. At it the root of things, a collection is something you can store other things inside. Just like in real life, a collection of marbles is just a "bunch" of marbles. The big difference in the collections framework is that the different implementations have different things they DO with t...

While touring a college campus with my daughter, one of her prospective cross country team mates said something that gave me pause. In effect, her statement was that she really liked cross country because everybody on the team was always pushing for you to do your best. Also, she continued, it's nice to know that you either succeeded or failed because of your own effort and training, not because of anyone else. I've thought about this for quite some time and I realize there is a VERY big distinction between "individual" sports like wrestling, swimming, or cross country... and "team" sports like soccer, football, or basketball. These differences are important not just on the playing field, but in any situation that requires teamwork. On "team" sports, you very often will have competition within the team that actually works against the team's objective. Additionally, individual team members may have to forgo performing at ...