First Things First

First off, I’d like to open this article by letting you all know that, as of Sept 9, 2014, I am a certified Java programmer. I passed the level 1 Java SE 7 certification. Pretty soon, I’ll start studying up for the level 2 test, which I’ll probably take early next summer. What this means for all of you is this: I supposedly know what I’m talking, so you should definitely listen to everything I say 🙂

Yeah, level 1 isn’t that big of a deal. It mostly just means I know how the language works; it doesn’t mean I’m actually any good at programming with it.

Also, I just wanted to let you all know that I hope to make this blog do a post every week, on Saturdays. Time will tell whether I can keep up that pace, since I work full-time and do 1 or 2 posts in a gaming blog each week already, too. If you’re interesting in tabletop RPGs, you should check it out. Continue Reading

Singletons often instantiate themselves lazily, and sometimes, if the object is heavy enough, class fields can be instantiated lazily.

Generally, when going the lazy route, the getter method (or accessor) has to have a block of code that checks whether the object is instantiated yet (and, if it isn’t, it needs to be instantiated) before returning it. This check is pointless once the object has been instantiated; it only serves to slow down a method that’s already (usually) blocking with synchronized or a Lock. Let’s look at a way to remove that code, shall we?

Disclaimer

I didn’t come up with this. I got it from Functional Programming in Java by Venkat Subramaniam. I highly recommend both the book and the author. Everything I’ve read by Venkat was well-done and easy to learn from. Continue Reading