Java By Comparison

Good code is short, simple, and symmetrical—the challenge is figuring out how to get there.

Sean Parent

Chapter 2Level Up Your Code Style

In role-playing games, no matter whether they’re digital or tabletop, you usually play a character with a unique set of skills. As the game progresses, your character moves through the game world, interacts with its inhabitants, and gathers experience through quests. Eventually, your character will gain new skills and “level up” her skills to a new a stage of mastery, becoming faster, stronger, smarter, or whatever it was you were practicing.

Programming is similar to playing games, and it can be just as addictive. It’s real life, so you don’t control a character—you are in the game. You move through the ...