Question

I was reading this Sun’s tutorial on Thread.

I found a block of code there which I think can be replaced by a code of fewer lines. I wonder why Sun’s expert programmers followed that long way when the task can be accomplished with a code of fewer lines.

I am asking this question so as to know that if I am missing something that the tutorial wants to convey.

The block of code is as follows:

    t.start();

    threadMessage("Waiting for MessageLoop thread to finish");
    //loop until MessageLoop thread exits
    while (t.isAlive()) {
        threadMessage("Still waiting...");
        //Wait maximum of 1 second for MessageLoop thread to
        //finish.
        t.join(1000);
        if (((System.currentTimeMillis() - startTime) > patience) &&
                t.isAlive()) {
            threadMessage("Tired of waiting!");
            t.interrupt();
            //Shouldn't be long now -- wait indefinitely
            t.join();
        }

    }
    threadMessage("Finally!");

I think that the above code can be replaced by the following:

t.start();
t.join(patience); // InterruptedException is thrown by the main method so no need to handle it

if(t.isAlive()) {
    // t's thread couldn't finish in the patience time
    threadMessage("Tired of waiting!");
    t.interrupt();
    t.join();
}

threadMessage("Finally!");

Answer 1

t.join(1000) 

That code isn’t actually supposed to be as smart as possible, but it’s there for demonstrating usage I guess