RE: field initializtion -- JAVA400-L

Joe,

I would have to say that if you are going to feed us oatmeal you had better
be eating it too.  I can smell a "Personal Attack" just as much as the next
guy.  In your conversations with Brad I have learned a lot about Java.  He
has been asking a lot of questions so the RPG world can find out if Java is
a good investment.  Most of the time all I hear from this list is high-level
garble about morphing or encapsulation or what not.  I like it when the list
gets its hands dirty and figures out code.

By By,

Aaron Bartell

-----Original Message-----
From: Joe Pluta [mailto:joepluta@plutabrothers.com]
Sent: Monday, March 26, 2001 2:49 PM
To: JAVA400-L@midrange.com
Subject: RE: field initializtion


> (...) returning null from a user class is NOT acceptable and generally a
pain in the arse.  

Well, I (and a couple of thousand Java programmers at Sun) disagree with
that statement.  Personally, I think returning null is far more consistent
than returning an empty String, since checking for null will work with every
object type... the equals method may not.  However, I'm not going to argue,
write your class how you want.  But it's pretty obvious to me that you're
trying to code around programming bugs rather than designing robust class
hierarchies.  You need to program around bugs in procedural languages, since
there is so much code duplicated (and often duplicated incorrectly).  In a
good OO design, however, every line is tested, and the code is reused so
heavily that bugs are worked out early in the development process.

As to the smileys, it's got nothing to do with my week.  Or maybe it does,
come to think of it.  I spent an incredibly productive week teaching a class
of bright, motivated RPG programmers how to design and implement
client/server applications using my standard Java/RPG model.  No
complaining, no bitching, just a bunch of programmers asking intelligent
questions (how do I handle numeric formatting errors?) and making things
work.  They designed classic two-panel maintenance progams over about a
dozen files, and now I'm scheduled to go back down and teach them how to
web-enable those applications and also how to revitalize their existing
legacy applications.

Then I come here and see you with your smileys wanking on about how Java
doesn't have a *PSSR.  Your continual comparisons from Java to RPG stretch
exceeding thin on me, especially since this is a JAVA mailing list, not a
RPGenerationX mailing list.  Not sure if anyone's told you, but saying some
sort of insulting or sarcastic statement, but ending it with a smiley is
actually improper netiquette - it's roughly akin to "God, you're fat... just
kidding!"  It's not polite, or cute, or amusing.

Of course, THAT particular diatribe is my own opinion.  I just hate smileys
tacked onto insults.  You add the smiley because you KNOW you're saying
something annoying, but at the same time you're trying to avoid
responsibility for being annoying with a little wink.

Way third grade.


> But they don't seem any better than MONMSG MSGID(CPF0000) in most
> examples I've seen.

Find some more examples.  try/catch is a very powerful error handling
technique, especially since the coding requirements are determined by the
API designer rather than the API user, as is the case in MONMSG.


Joe

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