This is a politics-free blog, but this needs to be said. I’ve watched most of the debates since the laughable Clinton/Dole ones, through the confusing Bush/Gore ones, and through the pitiful Bush/Kerry ones, and that was the first real presidential debate I’ve ever seen. Two smart guys going at it (after a bit of prodding by Jim Awesomepants Lehrer), minimal bald-faced-lies, presenting real differences of beliefs and leadership. Maybe this whole democracy thing actually works…
Month: September 2008
52 Word Review: Hancock
Hancock is the most under-rated movie of 2008 so far. It’s not great, but it’s pretty good and very fun and likeable. It’s got some actual humor, superhero effects, a few cheesy scenes and lines, and a simple but effective backstory. It also isn’t trying to start a franchise, which is a nice change.
Java Goofs: Enhanced For Loop
One of the “big deals” in Java 5 was the enhanced for-loop. Basically you could trim this:
for(int i=0;i<collection.size();i++) {
Object object = collection.get(i);
doSomething(object);
}
down to this:
for(Object object:collection) {
doSomething(object);
}
I don’t think such an improvement was really necessary, but combine this with generics and I have to admit your code does look a little cleaner, so I use them when possible. However, the for-loop is basically a half-implemented hack with two major goofs.
1. It works with anything implementing Iterable, and arrays. Despite working with anything Iterable, it does not work actual iterators, which seems just silly to me.
2. If the collection is null, it throws a NullPointerException. The only defense I’ve seen for this is that “a null collection is not the same as an empty collection”. Agreed, and those people clearly missed the point. The point was to clean up the code and now we have to add the same silly if(collection==null) around the loop. If your code really did need to know if the collection was null (e.g. lazy-loading), it’s going to check anyways, but this would save at least one more repetitive line if the loop just treated null as empty and did nothing.