Bad Programming Practices 101: Become a Better Coder by Learning How (Not) to Program

© Karl Beecher 2018

Karl BeecherBad Programming Practices 101https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-3411-2_4

4. Conditionals

Karl Beecher¹ 

(1)

Berlin, Germany

 

Objectives

In this chapter, you’ll learn:

• How to make poorly structured and incomplete conditionals

• How to write gnarled and error-prone expressions

• What nesting is and how you can abuse it to write complicated code

Prerequisites

Before reading this chapter, make sure you’re familiar with:

• For-each loops

• Basic String methods in Java, particularly equals, substring, length, and charAt

• The basic idea behind reading files in Java

• Logical operators (&&, || and !)

Introduction

Conditionals (like if statements and select statements) allow the computer to choose automatically between different possibilities. ...