Menage à Trois Bingo

No one but another Java programmer is likely to understand this, but since one way I learn things for good is by writing them down, I'm doing it anyway.

The last three days I've been trying to figure out a NullPointerException when calling the constructor of a new class I'd made. "But there's no objects being accessed *on* that line other than the one I'm building!" I kept thinking. "Why isn't the debugger even *going* to the constructor?"

I've just finally figured it out. There was an object access on that line. A very sneaky one: I created the constructor to take an int primitive...and I was passing in an Integer object, relying on the automatic unboxing of primitive wrapper objects that has been part of Java since Java 5. And my Integer object...was null. Heh. I'd have gotten it in 1/2 second if the line throwing the NPE had read

     MyObject obj = new MyObject(someInteger.intValue());

but since it read

     MyObject obj = new MyObject(someInteger);

it went right past me. FOR DAYS.

I tried everything I could think of. I googled and read all the documents on constructors and NullPointerExceptions I could find, all of which were either oriented to beginners or specific to older versions of Java, I moved the class definition around in its containing class, and because I simply could not believe there was a problem I ran and reran the same error-filled code. BAH.

So now I know. And now you-all also know that even with over 10 years experience doing Java, I can still miss things.

I have just checked in code against a CR that has been hanging over my head for five months!!!!!!!!

I had been poking at it every week or so but just could never get a purchase on it. I was convinced I had to finagle my requirements into a massive, messy, incomprehensible, already-existing method--without breaking it for everyone else.

This week, I finally realized that I could do some checking for my conditions and just write a new method for my stuff and let the rest fall through to the old method. But even that didn't quite do it.

Finally, this morning, I moved the new code into a different class, leapfrogging the old messy one altogether. And it works like a champ.

This makes two weeks that I've been working on the big new Java project here at work.

I'm finding that my days are going much faster and I'm feeling much more productive. Even though there are not many results to show for my work, yet, I feel like I'm doing more, learning more, and enjoying it more than I was previously. I really prefer new development, particularly at this early stage of setting the standards, trying things out to see whether they work, and playing with new ideas. Even though I was on the new development team before, it was always constrained within the existing products. This is fun!