Style
26-Jul-16
Why style matters
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Good style isn’t just to make your code “look pretty”
The most critical factor in style is readability
If a program is readable,
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It is easier to debug
It is easier to maintain
It is easier to upgrade
For “real” programs (those that actually get used), the
time spent reading them far exceeds the time spent
writing them
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Two kinds of style
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“Syntactic” style
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Mostly pretty mechanical: Spacing, indentation, capitalization, etc.
Eclipse can do a lot of this for you
Some more conceptual, for example, the names of methods should be
verbs
Syntactic style is easier to define
“Semantic” style
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Largely or completely non-mechanical
Rules are “slippery,” harder to describe and to apply
Learned largely through experience
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But only if you are willing to experiment and try new approaches
Ultimately much more important than syntactic style
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Syntactic style
Be consistent!
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Most times, you will enter an ongoing project, with
established style rules
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Follow them even if you don’t like them
As they are what your team is used to, they will be more
readable to other members of your team
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Do it right the first time
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You only write code once, but you read it many times
while you’re trying to get it to work
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Good style makes it more readable and helps you get it right!
You’re working on a large project, so you use good
style...
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...but you need a tool to help you do one little job, so you slap
it together quickly
Guess which program will be around longer and used by more
people?
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Indent nested code
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Always indent statements that are nested inside (under the
control of) another statement
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if (itemCost <= bankBalance) {
writeCheck(itemCost);
bankBalance = bankBalance - itemCost;
}
The open brace always goes at the end of a line
The matching close brace lines up with the statement being
closed
Don’t use C-style braces unless that is the already established
standard for the project you are on
Indentation should be consistent throughout the program
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4 spaces is the standard for Java (other languages may differ)
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Break up long lines
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Keep your lines short enough to be viewed and printed
Many people use 72 or 80 character limits
Suggestions on where to break a long line:
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It’s illegal to break a line within a quoted string
Break after, not before, operators
Line up parameters to a method
Don’t indent the second line of a control statement with a
long test so that it lines up with the statements being
controlled
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Don’t use “hard” tabs
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A hard tab is an actual tab character in your text
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It tells the program to go to the next tab stop (wherever
that is)
Not every program puts tab stops in the same place
If you use hard tabs to indent, sooner or later your
nice indentation will be ruined
Good editors can be set to use soft tabs (your tab
characters are replaced with spaces)
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When you hit the tab key, the editor puts spaces into your
file, not tab characters
With soft tabs, your indentation is always safe
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Using spaces
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Use spaces around all binary operators except “dot”:
if (n > 1 && n % 2 == 1) n = 3 * n + 1;
Do not use spaces just within parentheses:
if ( x < 0 ) x = -x; // don’t do this
Use a space before and after the parenthesized test in a control
statement:
if (x < 0) {...}
while (x < 0) {...}
Do not use a space between a method name and its parameters;
do put a space after each comma:
int add(int x, int y) {...}
a = add(3, k);
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Use meaningful names
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Names should be chosen very carefully, to indicate
the purpose of a variable or method
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If the purpose changes, the name should be changed
Spend a little time to choose the best name for each of your
variables and methods!
Long, multiword names are common in Java
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Eclipse will complete long names for you (control-space)
However, if a name is too long, maybe you’re trying to use
it for too many purposes
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Don’t change the name, separate the purposes
Don’t abbreviate names
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But very common abbreviations, such as max for
“maximum”, are OK
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Meaningful names: exceptions I
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It is common practice to use i as the index of a forloop, j as the index of an inner loop, and k as the
index of a third-level loop
This is almost always better than trying to come up
with a meaningful name
Example:
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for (int i = 1; i <= 10; i++) {
for (int j = 1, j <= 10; j++) {
System.out.println(" " + (i * j));
}
}
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Meaningful names: exceptions II
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Local variables in methods may be given short, simple
names, if:
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The purpose of the variable is obvious from context, and
The variable is used only briefly, in a small part of the
program
But never use meaningless names for fields (class or
instance variables) or classes or methods
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Meaningful names: exceptions III
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If variables have no special meaning, you can use
names that reflect their types
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For example, if you are writing a general method to work
with any strings, you might name them string1, string2, etc.
Alternatively, you can use very short names
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s, t, u, or s1, s2, etc. are often used for Strings
p, q, r, s are often used for booleans
w, x, y, z are often used for real numbers
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Naming classes and interfaces
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Capitalize the first letter of each word, including the first
word:
PrintStream, Person, ExemptEmployee
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Use nouns to name classes:
ExemptEmployee, CustomerAccount
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Classes are supposed to represent things
Use adjectives to name interfaces:
Comparable, Printable
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Interfaces are supposed to represent features
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Naming variables
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Capitalize the first letter of each word except the first:
total, maxValue
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Use nouns to name variables:
balance, outputLine
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Variables are supposed to represent values
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Naming methods
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Capitalize the first letter of each word except the first:
display, displayImage
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Methods are capitalized the same as variables
Use verbs when naming methods:
displayImage, computeBalance
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Methods are supposed to do something
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Naming constants
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A constant is an identifier whose value, once given,
cannot be changed
Constants are written with the keyword final, for
example:
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final int FIVE = 5;
final float AVOGADROS_NUMBER = 6.022E23;
Constants are written in ALL_CAPITALS, with
underscores between words
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Correct (syntactic) style made easy
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In Eclipse, go to Window  Preferences  Java 
Code Style  Formatter, and under Select a
profile: choose Java conventions [built-in]
Select some or all of your code and choose Source 
Format
To simply indent correctly, without reformatting, select
some lines and choose Source  Correct Indentation
or just type ctrl-I.
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Semantic Style
Think small
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According to world-famous computer scientist Edgser
Dijkstra, “We have small heads.”
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Small, single purpose methods are much easier to read,
write, and debug
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Translation: We can only keep track of a few things at a time
Difficulty goes up with the square of the length of the method
Think of each method as a “verb” in a language you are
inventing for this particular problem
Remember the acronym KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid.
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Design before you program
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Good design, especially good choice of data structures,
makes a huge difference in how difficult it is to write a
program
For any given assignment, it is typical to see some
submissions ten times as long as other submissions
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This probably means the student put in ten times as much
work
The longer the program, the less likely it is to be correct
Good programmers usually consider at least two or
three ways of doing the assignment before they start
coding
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Test first
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You have to test anyway, so why not write the tests
first?
TDD (Test Driven Design) leads to:
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Shorter, single purpose methods
Methods that are testable
Methods with a clearly defined function
Methods that are more independent (i.e. you don’t have to set
up a lot of context before the method can be used)
Better separation of concerns (for example, computation vs.
input/output)
A good test suite greatly simplifies future maintenance
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Keep it DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself)
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Don’t copy and paste code
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If you repeat a block of code, and the code needs to be
debugged or modified, you have to find every place that the
code occurs
If different parts of a program all use the same code, errors in
that code will be exposed and caught much earlier
The DRY principle also applies to data
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If you have two representations of the same information, they
must be kept consistent—this is extra work and error-prone
Every bit of data should have a single “master”
representation; use methods to derive other views of that data
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Refactor, early and often
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Whenever you see a better way of doing things than you are
currently doing them, refactor
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Here are the most common refactorings:
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Refactoring is modifying code without changing what it does, in order to
make it simpler, cleaner, better
Refactoring is often necessary in order to add new functionality to a
program
Changing the name of a variable or method when you change what it does
(or just think of a better name)
Extracting a chunk of code and making it a method (instead of copying and
pasting the code)
Eclipse makes many refactorings easy and (relatively) fairly safe
Refactoring is a lot easier and safer if you have a good test suite
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Comment
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Write Javadoc comments for the person who is going to use your
classes and methods
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Tell them everything they need to know in order to use your code
Don’t tell them how the code works (unless it’s absolutely required in
order to use the code—but this indicates a bad code design)
Write internal comments for the person who is going to maintain
your code
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Don’t repeat the obvious—assume they know some Java
Explain tricky or obscure code
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Better yet, replace tricky or obscure code with cleaner code
Your goal should always be for short, simple, self-explanatory code
that doesn’t need comments
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Do user testing
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Sure, you think your user interface is simple and
obvious—you wrote it!
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Sorry, but this is one area where your intuition simply cannot
be trusted
Even user-interface experts get surprised
Getting even one person to try out your user interface
will likely find 90% of the problems with it
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The End
“Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with
18 000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers of
the future may have only 1 000 vacuum tubes and
perhaps weigh 1½ tons.”
—Popular Mechanics, March 1949
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