http://www.javaspecialists.eu The Java(tm) Specialists' Newsletter features advanced articles and tips surrounding the Java Programming Language en Copyright 2000-2005, Dr Heinz Max Kabutz Dr Heinz Kabutz Dr Heinz Kabutz 1440 http://www.javaspecialists.eu/archive/Issue162.html Tue, 10 Jun 2008 00:00:00 GMT In this article, we look at exception handling in Java. We start with the history of exceptions, looking back at the precursor of Java, a language called Oak. We see reasons why Thread.stop() should not be used and discover the mystery of the RuntimeException name. We then look at some best practices that you can use for your coding, followed by some worst practices, in the form of exception anti-patterns. http://www.javaspecialists.eu/archive/Issue161.html Fri, 23 May 2008 00:00:00 GMT The developers of the Java language tried their best to stop us from constructing our own enum instances. However, for testing purposes, it can be useful to temporarily add new enum instances to the system. In this newsletter we show how we can do this using the classes in sun.reflect. In addition, we use a similar technique to modify static final fields, which we need to do if we want the switch statements to still work with our new enums. http://www.javaspecialists.eu/archive/Issue160.html Mon, 12 May 2008 00:00:00 GMT Imagine a very stubborn father insisting that his equally stubborn child eat its spinach before going to sleep. In real life one of the "threads" eventually will give up, but in Java, the threads become deadlocked, with neither giving an inch. In this newsletter we discover how we can sometimes escape from such deadlocked situations in Java and learn why the stop() function should never ever ever be called. http://www.javaspecialists.eu/archive/Issue159.html Mon, 5 May 2008 00:00:00 GMT We all expect faster hardware to make our code execute faster and better. In this newsletter we examine why this is not always true. Sometimes the code breaks on faster servers or executes slower than on worse hardware.