Documentation and Style
Documentation and Comments Programs should be self-documenting. Use meaningful variable names. Use indentation and white space to show program structure (jGRASP does most of this automatically) Use comments to explain what the program is doing.
Comments in Java Anything following a double slash ( // ) on a line is considered a comment, e.g., double radius; //in inches Anything between the symbols /* and */, no matter how many lines are included, is considered to be a comment, e.g., /*This is a comment */
Program Comment Header It’s good to put a comment header block at the beginning of each separately compilable piece of code. For example, for this class you might have a header like the following: /* Purpose: to determine the area of a circle Author: Jane Q. Programmer Address: Programming Assignment: #3 Last Changed: September 1, 2009 */
Placement of Brackets and Indentation One convention for the placement of brackets is the one used in our textbook (example).example A second convention is to line up the open and close brackets in the same column (example).example The code inside each set of brackets is indented.
Naming Constants Place the keywords public static final in front of the declaration setting the value of the constant, e.g., public static final double PI = ; By convention constants are named using all capital letters.