So the other day I pushed some changes to one of my Git repositories and I was asked to enter my username and password, something I hadn’t needed to do in weeks. Then I got an e-mail from GitHub.

Hi @Alonso-del-Arte,

You recently used a password to access the repository at Alonso-del-Arte/chess with git using git/2.26.0.windows.1.

Basic authentication using a password to Git is deprecated and will soon no longer work. Visit https://github.blog/2020-12-15-token-authentication-requirements-for-git-operations/ for more information around suggested workarounds and removal dates.

Thanks,
The GitHub Team

Huh? What? Are you as confused as I am? Are all passwords going to…

Single-purpose calculators are frequently used as exercises for Java beginners. The instructor tasks the students with writing a command line program that calculates the area of a room in square feet, or it calculates body mass index (BMI), or it converts an amount of money in one currency to another, etc.

To do the same thing with a graphical user interface (GUI), such as with Java Swing, would be too difficult for a Java beginner, because there is a lot more overhead. Or is it? After all, the three major integrated development environments (IDEs) include GUI form designers.

In this…

The concept of object-oriented can feel quite difficult to comprehend, with all its arcane concepts, inscrutable jargon and indecipherable acronyms. It’s actually a very simple concept that anyone can understand, if it’s explained clearly enough.

Though explaining it simply might be difficult. I’m going to try with this article. My goal here isn’t to impress you with my knowledge of object-oriented programming and make you feel like a dummy, there are plenty of other people out there doing that.

I hope that I get comments saying I’ve made the concept sound very clear. You won’t be able to create a…

Don’t Repeat Yourself (DRY) is a principle worth observing, within reason. Java has a reputation for being verbose, and certain kinds of repetition in Java seem unavoidable.

One kind of repetition that sometimes occurs is constructor validation redundancy, in which several constructors in a class check their parameters for the same characteristics.

Such repetition can cause serious problems when it’s necessary to make a change to a class, and the programmers fail to notice that certain lines that were duplicated were not changed together.

Constructor chaining can at least sometimes help you avoid such repetition of constructor parameter validation. That…

Field hiding in Java is a somewhat confusing feature of the language, or misfeature, depending on your opinion. Consider this toy example:

public abstract class SomeSuperClass {
    
    public final String something = "Just for the sake of example";
    
    public void printSomethingNumberOfTimes(int number) {
        if (number > 0) {
            for (int i = 0; i < number; i++) {
                System.out.println(i + ". " + something);
            }
        }
    }
    
}

This of course serves no practical purpose other than to help me make my point. Let’s extend that class like this:

public class SomeSubClass extends SomeSuperClass {…

If you know abstract classes in Java, and you know a little bit about Scala syntax, you might think you already know how abstract classes work in Scala: pretty much the same as in Java, with a few minor differences.

And you’d be right. Scala abstract classes are a lot like Java abstract classes. The minor differences might trip you up occasionally, though. Or they might be pleasant surprises.

For this article, I’m going to assume that you indeed know about abstract classes in Java, so I won’t rehash the Java syntax, except to compare and contrast to Scala syntax.

…

You can find lots of advice online about several different ways to keep “secrets” like API keys and passwords out of Git repositories, but I haven’t been able to find concrete examples for Java programs. This article will detail those concrete examples.

There are quite a few different ways to keep API keys out of Git repositories, each with its own pros and cons. Some articles explain the pros and cons, but without examples, it’s a little difficult to assess which way is the best way for your particular project.

Hopefully these examples I present here will help you figure…

The three major integrated development environments (IDEs) all provide neat integration of JUnit, making it very easy to write and run JUnit tests without having to use the command line.

Of course they differ in how they provide that integration. In IntelliJ IDEA, each valid test gets a green play button allowing the test to run by itself, and another green play button to run all the tests in a test class.

There’s no way to run a single test by itself in NetBeans, except of course when a test class contains only a single test. …