Re: News for Java?

From:
Travers <tnaran@gmail.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.java.programmer
Date:
Tue, 4 Jan 2011 11:43:22 -0800 (PST)
Message-ID:
<9f5d2081-f2c1-4e11-9e76-e58a1b02696c@22g2000prx.googlegroups.com>
On Jan 4, 9:26 am, Tim Slattery <Slatter...@bls.gov> wrote:

Travers Naran <tna...@gmail.com> wrote:

Passed by reference: *splurts coffee* am I the only programmer that
hates this? I hate sending 10 parameters in when I can just send in a
class/structure.


And objects are passed by reference. All non-basic Java variables
(everything except char, int, float, double, boolean...) are
references to an object.


Let me clarify. My understanding of pass by reference, in this C#
context, is:

public void createStream(out StreamClass b) {
  b = new StreamClass();
}

public void main() {
 ...
 StreamClass b = null;
 createStream(b);
 // b is now magically filled with a reference to a new StreamClass
}

It's _this_ kind of C# pass by reference I am opposed to. In OOP, I
don't believe one needs this kind of pass by reference for anything.
I can think of maybe one case for optimization:

class Coord {

 public void toPixelXY(out int x, out int y) {
  x = ...;
  y = ...;
 }
}

In this case, the overhead of creating a new class just to pass two
integers back may be overkill. But I'd still say, "Profile first,
Optimize Second". Also, one could use instead:

class WorldCoord {

  public void toPixelXY( PixelCoord coord ) {
    coord.x = ...;
    coord.y = ...;
  }
}

Which could potentially be just as efficient, especially in case like:

PixelCoord pc = new PixelCoord();
for {i = 0; i <= MAX_POINTS; i++ ) {
  wc[i].toPixelXY(pc);
  // Draw with pc
}

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