Java: Resizable Arraylists are won't stay parallel - java

I have a situation where my 'agent' objects contain a vast amount of data, including graphics, physics, and now also ai.
I was previously coding components of these 'agents' in separate objects, that were parallel. Now I realize, since the agents are contained in a re-sizable ArrayList, that if one of the agents is destroyed, the indices will no longer be parallel to the ai components.
Truth be told, the agent class is already 10 pages long, and it is very sensible to contain the ai methods and data in a separate object. One issue with this, of course, is that the methods will be 'reproduced' in a way, because instead of having one ai object that will accept and process the data from the many agents, I need one ai object per every agent object.
I asked about this once before and was told that having multiple instances of methods has no effect on performance or memory bloat, so that shouldn't be an issue.
I am not sure how I can solve this problem, except by possibly storing an agent_id in the agent object as well as the ai object and then running a search on each list whenever I need to call them. Needless to say, that is terrible way of doing things performance wise.
In C++, the simple solution to this problem would be a pointer, where the pointer to the proper ai instance would be contained in the agent data. I don't know how to do this, so my best solution is to just cram more data into the agent object and have it passed as an argument to the ai object.
Is there any better way to solve this 'parallel mismatching' problem.
Edit>>>
I know I can stuff all of the data into the agent class. What I was taught, is having a 30 page class is an example of bad oop structure.
My question is, how can I create a /reference/ to store in the agent class, while keeping all of the ai data encapsulated in the ai module.
Edit>> Example
public class Agent{
//pseudo code that represents what I need (yes the class declaration order is wrong)
AI_ref = new Reference(ai_module);
Graphics_ref = new Reference(graphics_module);
int[][] physics_data; //Like I said, 10 pages of this
void method1(){}
void method2(){}
//....
}
public class graphics_module{
int[][] graphics_data; //this is also about 10 pages
void method1(){}
void method2(){}
//....
}
public class ai_module{
int[][] ai_data; //this will likely span 5ish pages
void method1(){}
void method2(){}
//....
}
}

Parallel arrays are a 1960's construct developed when Basic and Fortran were modern languages. These languages had no other data structures.
Since the 1990s with OO development, if you have several different types of data that belong together, you create an object to hold references to those bits of data such that you don't need to worry about parallel anything.
I strongly suggest you refactor your code to modern best practices and use objects. Since you've provided no explicit details, this is about the most explicit answer that can be given.

To create your references, try
public class Agent{
//pseudo code that represents what I need (yes the class declaration order is wrong)
ai_module AI_ref = new ai_module();
graphics_module Graphics_ref = new graphics_module();
int[][] physics_data; //Like I said, 10 pages of this
void method1(){}
void method2(){}
//....
}
As for your parallel arrays, your example doesn't really provide enough detail to demonstrate what you are trying to do.
//pseudo code that represents what I need (yes the class declaration order is wrong)
Do you mean defining Agent before defining ai_module and graphics_module is wrong? It's not. The java compiler will have no issue with that.
You should probably work through a basic java tutorial. I think it will address many of your issues.

Related

Understanding Encapsulation in OOP with code

Trying to understand the concept of encapsulation, I came across this definition "Combining the attributes and methods in the same entity in such a way as to hide what should be hidden and make visible what is intended to be visible".
But practicing the same, I am not sure which of the following code is more apt for OOP:
public class Square {
//private attribute
private int square;
//public interface
public int getSquare(int value) {
this.square = value * value;
return this.square;
}
}
or
public class Square {
//private attribute
private int square;
//public interface
public int getSquare(int value) {
this.square = calculateSquare(value);
return this.square;
}
//private implementation
private int calculateSquare(int value) {
return value * value;
}
}
Combining the attributes and methods in the same entity in such a way as to hide what should be hidden and make visible what is intended to be visible
This is a potentially misleading statement. You are NOT hiding anything from anyone. It is also not about methods or fields. Unfortunately this is the way things are worded in almost every place.
How
When writing any piece of program, (be it a function, class, module, or library) we think of the piece we are working on as my code, every other code as my client code. Now assume that all the client code is written by someone else, NOT you. You write just this code. Just assume this, even if you are the only one person working on the entire project.
Now the client code needs to interact with my code. So my code should be nice and decent to talk to. The concept of encapsulation says, that I partition my code in two parts, (1) that the client code should be bothered with, (2) that the client code should NOT be bothered with. The OO way of achieving encapsulation is by using keywords like public and private. The non OO way of achieving this is naming convention like leading underscores. Remember, you are not hiding, you are just marking it as none-of-your-business.
Why
So why should we encapsulate things? What should be organize my code into public and private regions? When someone uses my code, they are of-course using the whole thing, not just public thing, so how come private is something that is none-of-their-business? Note here words like someone and their could refer to yourself - but only while working on the other piece of code.
The answer is easy testability and maintainability. A complete project if tested exhaustively, can be quite a task. So at minimum, when you are done coding, you just test the public aspects of my code. You do not test any of the client code, you do not test any of the private aspects of my code. This reduces test effort while preserving sufficient coverage.
Another aspect is maintainability. My code will NEVER be perfect, it WILL need revisions. Either because of bugfix or enhancement, my code will need tinkering. So when a new version of my code is available, how much is client code impacted? None, if changes are in private regions. Also, while planning a change, we try to confine it as much as possible in private regions. So the change, from client's perspective becomes a no-impact. A change in public aspects of my code, will almost always require changes in client code, now that will need testing. While planning the big picture of my code, we try to maximize the area under private regions and minimize the area under public regions.
And more
The idea of encapsulating links with the idea of abstracting which in turn links with idea of polymorphism. None of these are strictly about OO. Even in non OO world like C or even Assembly, these apply. The way to achieve these differ. Even this applies to things beyond computers.
The process of sewage management, for example, is
encapsulated within the public interface of drains. The general public bothers only with the drains. The treatment, the disposal, the recycling are none of general public's business. Thus, the sewage management could be treated as an -
abstract entity - an interface with just the drains. Different government and companies implement this in their own way. Now an city may have a permanent system of sewage management, or it can periodically -
switch providers. In fifty years of government operation, the situation was bad, but once they contracted that BigCorp Inc, now people can breathe free. We just did polymorphism. We switched implementations, keeping the public interface same. Both government and the BigCorp Inc use the same drains, but their own processing facilities, which are encapsulated away and polymorphically switchable.
In your code
In both your codes you chose to encapsulate the storage, the field is made private. This is a nice approach and certainly OO way. In both of your codes, the algorithm is also encapsulated - i.e not visible to the client. Nice. In your second code, you went ahead and extracted the algorithm in a separate non-public method. This is commendable approach, although obviously an overkill for doing something trivial. Better OO none the less.
What you did in second code even has a name: the strategy pattern. Even though here it is useless (and overkill), it could be useful in a scenario when let say you are dealing with extremely large numbers, such that calculating their squares take very long time. In such a scenario, you could make your calculateSquare method protected, have a class FastButApproxSquare extends Square, and override the calculateSquare method with a different algo which calculates an approx value much faster. This way you could do Polymorphism. Whoever needs exact value will use the Square class. Whoever needs approx value will use FastButApproxSquare class.
Encapsulation is about hiding implementation and structure details from client code. In addition it is about coherence: keep things close together which are highly related to each other.
For example consider a class which manages players of a football team:
public class FootballTeam {
public final List<Player> players = new ArrayList<>();
}
Client code would have access to the list of players, to look them up, to add players and so on:
public class FootballManager {
private final FootballTeam team = new FootballTeam();
public void hirePlayer(Player player) {
team.players.add(player);
}
public void firePlayer(int jerseyNo) {
Optional<Player> player = team.players.stream()
.filter(p -> p.getJerseyNo() == jerseyNo)
.findFirst();
player.ifPresent(p -> team.players.remove(p));
}
}
Now, if someone decides to change the field FootballTeam.players into a Map<Integer, Player>, mapping the players jersey number to the player, the client code would break.
In addition the client code deals with aspects / features closely related to a player. To protect the client code and to ensure changeability of the FootballTeam implementation hide all implementation details, keep player related functionality close to the structure, representing the team and reduce the public interface surface:
public class FootballTeam {
private final Map<Integer, Player> players = new HashMap<>();
public void addPlayer(Player player) {
players.put(player.getJerseyNo(), player);
}
public Optional<Player> lookupPlayer(int jerseyNo) {
return Optional.ofNullable(players.get(jerseyNo));
}
public void remove(Player player) {
players.remove(player.getJerseyNo());
}
}
public class FootballManager {
private final FootballTeam team = new FootballTeam();
public void hirePlayer(Player player) {
team.addPlayer(player);
}
public void firePlayer(int jerseyNo) {
team.lookupPlayer(jerseyNo)
.ifPresent(player -> team.remove(player));
}
}
If any code serves the purpose of encapsulation then that code is correct. The purpose of encapsulation is to provide a process of hiding the variables from other classes (i.e. by making the variable as private) and also to provide a way for other classes to access and modify the variables. Both of your code serves this purpose correctly.
If you would have used "calculateSquare(int value)" method as "public" then there would have been a problem. Other class could call this method directly without using set/get method. So as far as your this method is "private" I think both the codes are all right.

How do you know when you need to add a separate class?

This is a pretty elementary general question, but it's pretty simple. I understand that you create a class to create objects, but I'm wondering if that is the ONLY reason why you would need to create a separate class? The reason I ask is because in a course I'm taking, all the students presented on the design of a program that we all had to build individually. Many students had 5-10 classes, while I only had 2. Both options seem to work just fine.
If this is a subjective question, then what is the most accepted way to write programs. What do industry leaders say about adding extra classes that might not exactly be 100% necessary?
Here are some guidelines:
Single Responsibility Principle
The single responsibility principle basically says that each class should only do one thing. If there is a class that handles two or more things, split that into multiple classes.
So check your classes now, is there any class that does a lot of things, like getting user input, doing caluclations, and printing the result? If that's the case you probably want to split that into multiple classes.
Abstraction
Abstraction in OOP is very important. It's basically the process of making real world things into classes or interfaces. For example, if you were doing a calculation app, you would have a Calculator class that does the actual calculation. You would also have a CalculatorWindow class that manages the window of the calculator, like listening for button events. This class can then give the user input to a Calculator object and have it calculate the result.
Design Patterns
There are a lot of design patterns out there. By looking at these design patterns, you can see how classes interact and hopefully you'll get when to create a new class.
There is no one-size-fits-all answer to this.
If this is a subjective question, then what is the most accepted way to write programs.
Obviously, that question is subjective too. (You don't expect us to do a survey for you do you?)
What do industry leaders say about adding extra classes that might not exactly be 100% necessary?
You mean like, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison?
They probably don't say anything.
Sure, there are some people who will get up on their soap box and tell you with great authority that X Y Z is "best practice" or some such. But most of the time these pronouncements are based on (at best) anecdotal evidence / personal experience. In other words, they are really opinions dressed up as facts.
Bottom line: there is no single correct answer, so you learn:
what works best for you (and your team), and
it is not really worth worrying too much about it ... provided what you are doing "works for you".
(The two extremes that don't "work" are when the classes are so fine-grained that you spend all of your time writing and reading boilerplate, OR the classes are so large and complex that you can no longer understand them.)
Different class are used to do different tasks. This reduces code duplication and increases code reuse. And this helps you to follow design pattern to solve some critical problem easily. This is good practice.
Here is a simple example.
To sort data.
//Without using multiple class
public class A{
public static void main(String[] args){
int array[] = {1,6,1,8,34,5};
for(int i=0; i< array.length; i++){
//your procedure to sort the array
}
//other operations;
//Now you need to sort another new array (new_array[])
int new_array[] = {1,6,1,8,34,5};
for(int i=0; i< new_array.length; i++){
//your procedure to sort the new_array
}
}
}
Here in this example we used two for loop to sort two different array. Now see a example with multiple classes
public class A{
public static void main(String[] args){
int array[] = {1,6,1,8,34,5};
int my_array[] = Opertaion.sortArray(array);
//other operations;
//Now you need to sort another new array (new_array[])
int new_array[] = {1,6,1,8,34,5};
int my_new_array[] = Opertaion.sortArray(new_array);
}
}
public class Opertaion{
public static int[] sortArray(int[] array){
for(int i=0; i< array.length; i++){
//your procedure to sort the array
}
return array;
}
}
The above example is very simple example but when you need to do big projects using multiple class will reduce your time to code.
Suppose when you are in a big project
you will write a class to control database queries, a Service class to handle other operation with that database class, a controller class to control everything etc.

Java efficiency of moving methods to another class

I'm currently currently working with a rather massive project with several classes of over 20, 000 lines. This is because it was someone's bright idea to mix in all the generated swing code for the UI with all of the functional code.
I was wondering if it would incur any extra cost in terms of memory or run time, to move most of the non-UI related functions into a separate class.
To provide an example, this is something along the lines of what I'm building.
public class Class1{
private Class1Util c1u;
List<String> infoItems;
...
public void Class1(){
c1u = new Class1Util(this);
}
public void btnAction(ActionListener al){
...
c1u.loadInfoFromDatabase();
}
}
public class Class1Util{
private Class1 c;
public void Class1Util(Class1 c){
this.c = c;
}
public void loadInfoFromDatabase(){
c.infoItems.add("blah");
}
}
Eventually, I'd also like to move some of the fields like infoItems over as well, which would result in a reverse relationship, with Class1 accessing c1u.infoItems.
no, separation of concerns is a good object oriented design practice. it will not cost you anything meaningful in terms of performance and will gain you many, many benefits in terms of maintenance, extensibility, etc.
You may get a tiny performance hit for an extra level of dereferencing, but it would not be noticeable in a UI code, and you will get so much extra clarity in return that you wouldn't regret it.
Eventually you may want to externalize state keeping into a third class, and then use that state from both your hand-written and generated code, or use the Generation Gap Pattern to manage complexity introduced by the need to integrate with the generated code.

Java static methods pros & cons

I havent used a lot of static methods before, but just recently I tend to use more of them. For example if I want to set a boolean flag in a class, or acess one without the need to pass the actual object through classes.
For example:
public class MainLoop
{
private static volatile boolean finished = false;
public void run()
{
while ( !finished )
{
// Do stuff
}
}
// Can be used to shut the application down from other classes, without having the actual object
public static void endApplication()
{
MainLoop.finished = true;
}
}
Is this something I should avoid? Is it better to pass a object so you can use the objects methods? Does the boolean finished counts as a global now, or is it just as safe?
A problem with using a static variable in this case is that if you create two (or more) instances of MainLoop, writing code that looks like it is shutting down only one of the instances, will actually shut down both of them:
MainLoop mainLoop1 = new MainLoop();
MainLoop mainLoop2 = new MainLoop();
new Thread(mainLoop1).start();
new Thread(mainLoop2).start();
mainLoop1.finished = true; // static variable also shuts down mainLoop2
This is just one reason (amongst many) for choosing to not use static variables. Even if your program today only creates one MainLoop, it is possible that in the future you may have reason to create many of them: for unit testing, or to implement a cool new feature.
You may think "if that ever happens, I'll just refactor the program to use member variables instead of static variables." But it's generally more efficient to pay the cost up front, and bake modular design into the program from the start.
There's no question that statics often make a quick and dirty program easier to write. But for important / complex code that you intend to test, maintain, grow, share, and use for years to come, static variables are generally recommended against.
As other answers to this question have noted, a static variable is a kind of global variable. And there's lots of information about why (generally) global variables are bad.
Yes, passing objects around is better. Using a singleton or static methods makes OO programming look like procedural programming. A singleton is somewhat better because you can at least make it implement interfaces or extend an abstract class, but it's usually a design smell.
And mixing instance methods with static variables like you're doing is even more confusing: you could have several objects looping, but you stop all of them at once because they all stop when a static variable changes.
Is this something i should avoid?
In general, yes. Statics represent global state. Global state is hard to reason about, hard to test in isolation, and generally has higher thread-safety requirements.
If I want to test what happens to an object in a certain state, I can just create the object, put it into that state, perform my tests, and let it get garbage collected.
If I want to test what happens to global state, I need to make sure I reset it all at the end of my test (or possibly at the start of every test). The tests will now interfere with each other if I'm not careful about doing that.
Of course, if the static method doesn't need to affect any state - i.e. if it's pure - then it becomes somewhat better. At that point all you're losing is the ability to replace that method implementation, e.g. when testing something that calls it.
In general, by making finished static like that you create a situation where there can only be one instance of your MainLoop class executing run at any one time. If there is more than one instance then setting finished will end them all -- not what is usually desired.
However, in this particular scenario, where you want to "end application", presumably meaning you want to end all instances of MainLoop, the approach may be justified.
However, the number of situations where this approach may be merited are few, and a "cleaner" way to handle this scenario would be to keep a static list of instances and work through the list, setting the instance variable finished in each instance. This allows you to also end individual instances, gives you a natural count of existing instances, etc.

What's the best way to handle coexistence of the "int enum" pattern with java enums as an API evolves?

Suppose you're maintaining an API that was originally released years ago (before java gained enum support) and it defines a class with enumeration values as ints:
public class VitaminType {
public static final int RETINOL = 0;
public static final int THIAMIN = 1;
public static final int RIBOFLAVIN = 2;
}
Over the years the API has evolved and gained Java 5-specific features (generified interfaces, etc). Now you're about to add a new enumeration:
public enum NutrientType {
AMINO_ACID, SATURATED_FAT, UNSATURATED_FAT, CARBOHYDRATE;
}
The 'old style' int-enum pattern has no type safety, no possibility of adding behaviour or data, etc, but it's published and in use. I'm concerned that mixing two styles of enumeration is inconsistent for users of the API.
I see three possible approaches:
Give up and define the new enum (NutrientType in my fictitious example) as a series of ints like the VitaminType class. You get consistency but you're not taking advantage of type safety and other modern features.
Decide to live with an inconsistency in a published API: keep VitaminType around as is, and add NutrientType as an enum. Methods that take a VitaminType are still declared as taking an int, methods that take a NutrientType are declared as taking such.
Deprecate the VitaminType class and introduce a new VitaminType2 enum. Define the new NutrientType as an enum. Congratulations, for the next 2-3 years until you can kill the deprecated type, you're going to deal with deprecated versions of every single method that took a VitaminType as an int and adding a new foo(VitaminType2 v) version of each. You also need to write tests for each deprecated foo(int v) method as well as its corresponding foo(VitaminType2 v) method, so you just multiplied your QA effort.
What is the best approach?
How likely is it that the API consumers are going to confuse VitaminType with NutrientType? If it is unlikely, then maybe it is better to maintain API design consistency, especially if the user base is established and you want to minimize the delta of work/learning required by customers. If confusion is likely, then NutrientType should probably become an enum.
This needn't be a wholesale overnight change; for example, you could expose the old int values via the enum:
public enum Vitamin {
RETINOL(0), THIAMIN(1), RIBOFLAVIN(2);
private final int intValue;
Vitamin(int n) {
intValue = n;
}
public int getVitaminType() {
return intValue;
}
public static Vitamin asVitamin(int intValue) {
for (Vitamin vitamin : Vitamin.values()) {
if (intValue == vitamin.getVitaminType()) {
return vitamin;
}
}
throw new IllegalArgumentException();
}
}
/** Use foo.Vitamin instead */
#Deprecated
public class VitaminType {
public static final int RETINOL = Vitamin.RETINOL.getVitaminType();
public static final int THIAMIN = Vitamin.THIAMIN.getVitaminType();
public static final int RIBOFLAVIN = Vitamin.RIBOFLAVIN.getVitaminType();
}
This allows you to update the API and gives you some control over when to deprecate the old type and scheduling the switch-over in any code that relies on the old type internally.
Some care is required to keep the literal values in sync with those that may have been in-lined with old consumer code.
Personal opinion is that it's probably not worth the effort of trying to convert. For one thing, the "public static final int" idiom isn't going away any time soon, given that it's sprinkled liberally all over the JDK. For another, tracking down usages of the original ints is likely to be really unpleasant, given that your classes will compile away the reference so you're likely not to know you've broken anything until it's too late
(by which I mean
class A
{
public static final int MY_CONSTANT=1
}
class B
{
....
i+=A.MY_CONSTANT;
}
gets compiled into
i+=1
So if you rewrite A you may not ever realize that B is broken until you recompile B later.
It's a pretty well known idiom, probably not so terrible to leave it in, certainly better than the alternative.
There is a rumor that the creator of "make" realized that the syntax of Makefiles was bad, but felt that he couldn't change it because he already had 10 users.
Backwards compatibility at all costs, even if it hurts your customers, is a bad thing. SO can't really give you a definitive answer on what to do in your case, but be sure and consider the cost to your users over the long term.
Also think about ways you can refactor the core of your code will keeping the old integer based enums only at the outer layer.
Wait for the next major revision, change everything to enum and provide a script (sed, perl, Java, Groovy, ...) to convert existing source code to use the new syntax.
Obviously this has two drawbacks:
No binary compatibility. How important this one is depends on the use cases, but can be acceptable in the case of a new major release
Users have to do some work. If the work is simple enough, then this too may be acceptable.
In the meantime, add new types as enums and keep old types as ints.
The best would be if you could just fix the published versions, if possible. In my opinion consistency would be the best solution, so you would need to do some refactoring. I personally don't like deprecated things, because they get into way. You might be able to wait until a bigger version release and use those ints until then, and refactor everything in a big project. If that is not possible, you might consider yourself stuck with the ints, unless you create some kinds of wrappers or something.
If nothing helps but you still evolve the code, you end up losing consistency or living with the deprecated versions. In any case, usually at least at some point of time people become fed up with old stuff if it has lost it's consistency and create new from scratch... So you would have the refactoring in the future no matter what.
The customer might scrap the project and buy an other product, if something goes wrong. Usually it is not the customer's problem can you afford refactoring or not, they just buy what is appropriate and usable to them. So in the end it is a tricky problem and care needs to be taken.

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