Question

I did a lot of Java programming and then dropped it and did a bunch of ruby. Now I am back in Java and I am wondering whether my programming style is strange.

My code below feels very verbose to me, and the question is it reasonably idiomatic Java?
Any suggestions/improvements that you would recommend?

    final static int FORCE_RIGHT = 0;
    final static int FORCE_DOWN = 1;
    final static int FORCE_LEFT = 2;
    final static int FORCE_UP = 3;
    final static int IMP_RIGHT = 4;
    final static int IMP_DOWN = 5;
    final static int IMP_LEFT = 6;
    final static int IMP_UP = 7;


    public void applyForce(int dir) {
        counter++;
        Vector2 vect = new Vector2();
        switch (dir) {
            case FORCE_RIGHT: vect = new Vector2(3.0f, 0.0f); break;
            case IMP_RIGHT: vect = new Vector2(1.0f, 0.0f); break;
            case FORCE_LEFT: vect = new Vector2(-3.0f, 0.0f); break;
            case IMP_LEFT: vect = new Vector2(-1.0f, 0.0f); break;
            case FORCE_UP: vect = new Vector2(0.0f, -3.0f); break;
            case IMP_UP: vect = new Vector2(0.0f, -1.0f); break;
            case FORCE_DOWN: vect = new Vector2(0.0f, 3.0f); break;
            case IMP_DOWN: vect = new Vector2(0.0f, 1.0f); break;
        }
        Vector2 place = body.getWorldCenter();
        if (dir == FORCE_RIGHT || dir == FORCE_LEFT || dir == FORCE_DOWN || dir == FORCE_UP) 
            { 
            body.applyForce(vect, place);
            }
        else 
            { 
            body.applyLinearImpulse(vect, place);
            }
        Log.v("CAR", "Applied force: " + dir + "("+counter+")");
    }

Answer 1

Here are my improvement suggestions:

• enums are smarter, since you can also apply behaviour, for example in your log you’d not only see a number
• instead of the switch statement you could apply a more generic algorithm, but it’s not necessarily better, since it then is more difficult to understand and change, even if it comes with less lines of code
• no need to do new Vector2() if you call the constructor again afterwards
• use consistent code formatting (e.g. place to put {, space charachters, …)