Java Guild Meeting 5/2018

Streams

Kids, today we're going to learn about streams.

The code below doesn't use them. It transforms a list of names into a list of the same names but capitalized. See how much effort you have to put in to understand what the function actually does (well, imagining I didn't just tell you). That's thanks to all the boilerplate and non-declarative code. There's a garbage list with an annoying name that actually changes meaning since it's mutable, an ugly old for-loop, you have return your garbage list at the end and EVERYTHING IS AWFUL.

However there's a silver lining. You can easily make this code beautiful using Streams and its map operator. Operators mostly take lambda functions or function references. Check this page for docs. To start a Stream from an array of values, use the static Stream.of method. Don't forget to .collect() the results at the end to collect all the elements in a collection again. Why not return the stream itself? Good question, attentive reader. You certainly can. Whether it's a good idea depends on the context.