Code Monkeyism

Programming is hard by Stephan Schmidt

June 6, 2006

Method names in Java can be named _ and why static import is a good thing

When formatting messages with Messages.format code becomes quite noisy. So I thought why not use a special char for the method name? I used “_” which seems to be unintrusive.

Messages.format( “FILES_WRITTEN”, files);

then becomes

Messages._( “FILES_WRITTEN”, files );

combining this with the new static import feature from Java 1.5 (great timing :-) this becomes

import static api.cintoo.messages.Messages.*;

_( “FILES_WRITTEN”, files);

which looks shorter and less noisy than the first and as the default Sun solution for i18n.

I think about using “$” for the method name,

$( “FILES_WRITTEN”, files);

looks perhaps more familiar with Prototype.js using $ and this also looks like templating engines as Velocity/ JSP.

About the author: Stephan Schmidt is currently a team manager at ImmobilienScout24 in Berlin. Stephan has been working as a head of development and CTO. He has used a lot of different technologies in the last 20 years including Java, Rails and Python. Stephans main field of interest is maintainablity and productivity in software development. Want to know more? All views are only his own.

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Comments

john smith

You’re kidding right? You think a method name of _ is a good thing? Then hiding it with a static import is a good thing?

It’s not april fools day. Where’s the “I’m Kidding” at the end of the entry?

June 6th, 2006
Tom

Three cheers. If it makes the code in question clearer, I agree. And Ctrl Click in the IDE will give all the details someone else might need when looking at the code.

June 6th, 2006
stephan

Yes, this is no joke. I’m a great admirer of readable code. Which usually includes understandable and descriptive method names (the Messages code is not that bad).

After i18ning a big project most of the code was littered with i18n constructs. This reduced readibilty of the original business code (i18n understood as a orthogonal, non-business aspect) and made the code a lot less readable than before. To the point where lots of i18n was littered through Swing, display, logging and error code and the original business code was not understandable anymore.

With $ and _ as method names, the i18n part of the code fades away and no longer blocks the view to the really important code, the business one.

But of course I would strongly regiment the usage of static imports in my projects and control the code with checkers or reviews. The same goes for $ and _ as or in method names. As always, don’t be ideological, but use the best tools for the job. And if the best tool is $ as a method name, then you should use it I think. For people who can’t live with $() or _(), Messages still supports Messages.format().

@Tom: Yes. In projects there should be a i18n guide with i18n guidelines for keys, words, wording, grammar and style. And the guide should explain how i18n is done, so the developers know what $() means. For reading code from other projects (open source) the IDE helps as you said.

June 6th, 2006

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