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“If we spoke a different language, we would perceive a somewhat different world.”3670
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Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951)
Although it is based on C++, Java is more of a “pure” object-oriented language.
Both C++ and Java are hybrid languages, but in Java the designers felt that the hybridization was not as important as it was in C++. A hybrid language allows multiple programming styles; the reason C++ is hybrid is to support backward compatibility with the C language. Because C++ is a superset of the C language, it includes many of that language’s undesirable features, which can make some aspects of C++ overly complicated.
The Java language assumes that you want to do only object-oriented programming. This means that before you can begin you must shift your mindset into an object-oriented world (unless it’s already there). The benefit of this initial effort is the ability to program in a language that is simpler to learn and to use than many other OOP languages. In this chapter you’ll see the basic components of a Java program and learn that (almost) everything in Java is an object.
You manipulate objects with references
Each programming language has its own means of manipulating elements in memory. Sometimes the programmer must be constantly aware of what type of manipulation is going on. Are you manipulating the element directly, or are you dealing with some kind of indirect representation (a pointer in C or C++) that must be treated with a special syntax?
All this is simplified in Java. You treat everything as an object, using a single consistent syntax. Although you treat everything as an object, the identifier you manipulate is actually a “reference” to an object.1 You might imagine a television (the object) and a remote control (the reference). As long as you’re holding this reference, you have a connection to the television, but when someone says, “Change the channel” or “Lower the volume,” what you’re manipulating is the reference, which in turn modifies the object. If you want to move around the room and still control the television, you take the remote/reference with you, not the television.
Also, the remote control can stand on its own, with no television. That is, just because you have a reference doesn’t mean there’s necessarily an object connected to it. So if you want to hold a word or sentence, you create a String reference:
String s;
But here you’ve created only the reference, not an object. If you decided to send a message to s at this point, you’ll get an error because s isn’t actually attached to anything (there’s no television). A safer practice, then, is always to initialize a reference when you create it:
String s = "asdf";
However, this uses a special Java feature: Strings can be initialized with quoted text. Normally, you must use a more general type of initialization for objects.
You must create all the objects
When you create a reference, you want to connect it with a new object. You do so, in general, with the new operator. The keyword new says, “Make me a new one of these objects.” So in the preceding example, you can say:
String s = new String("asdf");
Not only does this mean “Make me a new String,” but it also gives information about how to make the String by supplying an initial character string.
Of course, Java comes with a plethora of ready-made types in addition to String. What’s more important is that you can create your own types. In fact, creating new types is the fundamental activity in Java programming, and it’s what you’ll be learning about in the rest of this book.
Where storage lives
It’s useful to visualize some aspects of how things are laid out while the program is running—in particular how memory is arranged. There are five different places to store data: