Question

Since uni, I’ve programming in Java for 3 years, although I am not fully dedicated to this language, I have spent quite some time in it, nevertheless. I understand both ways, just curious which style do you prefer.

Please focus at the main method – that’s the section I concern the most.

public class Test
{
    public static void main(String[] args)
    { 
        System.out.println(getAgent().getAgentName());
    }

    private static Agent getAgent()
    {
        return new Agent();
    }
}
class Agent
{
    private String getAgentName()
    {
        return "John Smith";
    }
}

I am pretty happy with nested method calls such like the following

public class Test
{
    public static void main(String[] args)
    { 
        System.out.println(getAgentName(getAgent()));
    }

    private static String getAgentName(Agent agent)
    {
        return agent.getName();
    }

    private static Agent getAgent()
    {
        return new Agent();
    }
}
class Agent
{
    public String getName()
    {
        return "John Smith";
    }
}

They have identical output I saw “John Smith” twice.

I wonder, if one way of doing this has better performance or other advantages over the other. Personally I prefer the latter, since for nested methods I can certainly tell which starts first, and which is after.

The above code is but a sample, The code that I am working with now is much more complicated, a bit like a maze… So switching between the two styles often blows my head in no time.

Answer 1

I would recommend against the latter style, since it mixes data retrieval with “busines logic” (i.e. what to do with the data).
With the first approach you keep a high degree of freedom in what you want to do with the data, e.g.

public static void main(String[] args)
{ 
      System.out.println(getAgent().getAgentName());
      System.err.println(getAgent().getAgentName());
      someTextArea.append("The agent name is: " + getAgent().getAgentName());
      // etc
}

If you chose to do things this way at least name the functions with names that clearly describes what is done, e.g.

private static void getAgentNameAndPrintIt(Agent agent)
{
    System.out.println(agent.getName());
}