Encapsulation

In my blog I write about misconceptions. Encapsulation is something you learn when you study Java and OOP. But it seems that most books fail to truly explain the problems you want to solve with it and those you get by using it. Often it’s just a short chapter or even just a small part about the important concepts of OOP. This is leading to misconceptions and poor understanding of OOP.

(Note: I wrote this before the release of Java 10. Expect that some things are somewhat outdated.)

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Understanding Java

To be able to use a language you need to actually understand it. This may seem obvious, but books on Java usually don’t have much on understanding the language. When you learn French you will want to be able to translate from and to French. 

What Operations can be performed on a Reference in Java?

In Java it’s important to know what references are and how they are used. So it’s important to know what operations can be performed on references.

Java knows no Constants

Java (both the language and the JVM) are not aware of constants. To reduce confusion it’s better to not use the term “constant” in Java code, unless it’s actually a universal constant.

Dos and Don’ts

Here’s some advice to all who have just begun learning Java. This also serves as an overview to my blog, where I write about all kinds of misconceptions and common problems with programming in Java.

Tuples in Java

Java doesn’t provide tuples. Here are some ideas what you can do about it.

Types of Methods in Java

So in Java there are many kinds of methods. I probably won’t even list half of them but I try to explain how different methods can be.

Functions in Java

There’s a lot of confusion about “functions” in Java. Java doesn’t really have them, but an object could represent a function so it kind of does have them. I try to explain the different meanings of “functions” in Java, other languages and in mathematics.

Misconceptions about the new Operator

New is used to create new objects. But it’s used carelessly.

Recursive Closures in Java

In Java you can only reference final fields inside a closure. Here’s my solution*.