Category: Software Development

Recently, I gained a glimpse of source code that gets taught in beginner’s developer courses. There was one aspect that really irked me, because I think it is fundamentally wrong from the pedagogical point of view and disrespectful towards the students.

Let me start with an abbreviated example of the source code. It is written in Java and tries to exemplify for-loops and if-statements. I omitted the if-statements in my renarration:

Scanner scanner = new Scanner(System.in);

int[] operands = new int[2];
for (int i = 0; i < operands.length; i++) {
    System.out.println("Enter a number: ");
    operands[i] = Integer.parseInt(scanner.nextLine());
}
int sum = operands[0] + operands[1];
System.out.println("The sum of your numbers is " + sum);

scanner.close();

As you can see, the code opens a possibility to input characters in the first line, asks for a number twice and calculates the sum of both numbers. It then outputs the result on the console.

There are a lot of problems with this code. Some are just coding style level, like using an array instead of a list. Others are worrisome, like the lack of exception handling, especially in the Integer.parseInt() line. Well, we can tolerate cumbersome coding style. It’s not that the computer would care anyway. And we can look over the missing exception handling because it would be guaranteed to overwhelm beginning software developers. They will notice that things go wrong once they enter non-numbers.

But the last line of this code block is just an insult. It introduces the students to the concept of resources and teaches them the wrong way to deal with them.

Just a quick reminder why this line is so problematic: The java.util.Scanner is a resource, as indicated by the implementation of the interface java.io.Closeable (that is a subtype of java.lang.AutoCloseable, which will be important in a minute). Resources need to be relased, freed, disposed or closed after usage. In Java, this step is done by calling the close() method. If you somehow fail to close a resource, it stays open and hogs memory and other important things.

How can you fail to close the Scanner in our example? Simple, just provoke an exception between the first and the last line of the block. If you don’t see the output about “The sum of your number”, the resource is still open.

You can argue that in this case, because of the missing exception handling, the JVM exits and the resource gets released nonetheless. This is correct.

But I’m not worried about my System.in while I’m running this code. I’m worried about the perception of the students that they have dealt with the resource correctly by calling close() at the end.

They learn it the wrong way first and the correct way later – hopefully. During my education, nobody corrected me or my peers. We were taught the wrong way and then left in the belief that we know everything. And I’ve seen too many other developers making the same stupid mistakes to know that we weren’t the only ones.

What is the correct way to deal with the problem of resource disposal in Java (since 2011, at least)? There is an explicit statement that supports us with it: try-with-resources, which leads to the following code:

try (
    Scanner scanner = new Scanner(System.in);
) {
    int[] operands = new int[2];
    for (int i = 0; i < operands.length; i++) {
        System.out.println("Enter a number: ");
        operands[i] = Integer.parseInt(scanner.nextLine());
    }
    int sum = operands[0] + operands[1];
    System.out.println("The sum of your numbers is " + sum);
}

I know that the code looks a lot more intimidating at the beginning now, but it is correct from a resource safety point of view. And for a beginning developer, the first lines of the full example already look dreading enough:

import java.util.Scanner;

public class Main {

    public static void main(String[] arguments) {
        // our code from above
    }
}

Trying to explain to an absolute beginner why the “public class” or the “String[] arguments” are necessary is already hard. Saying once more that “this is how you do it, the full explanation follows” is doing less damage on the long run than teaching a concept wrong and then correcting it afterwards, in my opinion.

If you don’t want to deal with the complexity of those puzzling lines, maybe Java, or at least the “full-blown” Java isn’t the right choice for your course? Use a less complex language or at least the scripting ability of the language of your choice. If you want to concentrate on for-loops and if-statements, maybe the Java REPL, called JShell, is the better suited medium? C# has the neat feature of “top-level statements” that gets rid of most ritual around your code. C# also calls the try-with-resources just “using”, which is a lot more inviting than the peculiar “try”.

But if you show the complexity to your students, don’t skimp on overall correctness. Way too much bad code got written with incomplete knowledge from beginners that were never taught the correct way. And the correct way is so much easier today than 25 years ago, when I and my generation of developers scratched their heads why their programs wouldn’t run as stable and problem-free as anticipated.

So, let me reiterate my point: There is no harm in simplification, as long as it doesn’t compromise correctness. Teaching incorrect or even unsafe solutions is unfair for the students.