[Bluej-discuss] style extensions

[Stephen Bloch]

Ian Barland wrote:
>Has anybody written a BlueJ extension for indenting (for students who didn?t
>write their code top-to-bottom, or who didn?t respect BlueJ?s suggested
>indenting)?

I don't know of one, but I too would like one.

>Also, on the extensions page I see a CheckStyle extension, which looks for
>?industrial-strength? style issues.  I?m planning on writing an extension
>which looks for more beginner-level problems.  If anybody has already done
>this, I?d be interested in seeing how they went about it.  (Or drop me a
>line if you just want to chat about the notion.)

CheckStyle is so enormously customizable that it applies to 
beginner-level problems as well as "industrial-strength" issues.  For 
example, my sole contribution to CheckStyle was a check named 
RequireThis, which complains if you refer to instance variables or 
methods of your own class without a "this." in front.  If you want to 
allow "this"-less access to variables but not methods, or vice versa, 
that's fine too.  No professional Java programmer in the world needs 
or wants that, but it's useful in CS1.  Likewise, you can turn on 
checks for "redundant boolean logic", e.g.
if (blah > snark)
    return true;
else
    return false;
You can turn on checks for the maximum number of lines in a method, 
or the maximum nesting complexity of a method, or all sorts of other 
things that help in teaching first-year students.
-- 
					Stephen Bloch
					sbloch at adelphi.edu