>> I -1 this patch unless you can sufficiently explain why e.g. >> >>> - tokenData = new HashMap<String, String>(5,1); >>> + tokenData = Maps.newHashMapWithExpectedSize(5); >> >> is better readable to someone with knowledge of the standard Java APIs >> and no knowledge of Google Collections. > > Is it really that hard to understand? Really? Some Junior Devs looked at > that code and easily understood the intent.
Did those Junior Devs also understand the initial incantation? >> All that this huge patch IMHO does is making the code harder to read >> for no particular reasons. > > There are reasons. In this case you use the factory methods to not repeat > yourself. Consider the degenerate case: > > Map<Integer, List<Map<Foo,Bar>>> = new > HashMap<Integer,List<Map<Foo,Bar>>>(5,1); > > you can replace the RHS with Maps.newHashMapWithExpectedSize(5) We are entering the realm of religious minutia here, but what is the benefit of taking a mathematical language and replacing it with a natural language? Sure, it makes sense for a small group of people (i.e. internal/personal development) to create and introduce "languages" that they find easier to understand, but when something is being consumed by some unknown plurality, it doesn't make sense to force that plurality to learn your way of doing things when there is a common, accepted way of doing it that they will already know. In math, it doesn't make sense to replace ∏ with "multiply-all-numbers-in-the-series" and ∑ with "sum-all-numbers-in-the-series", because the symbols are a part of the "universal" mathematical language. People who understand math will understand the symbols. Switching the names to "multiply-all-numbers-in-the-series" might work well for introducing English speakers to the idea of ∏, but it will do very little for anyone who doesn't speak English. While it's probably true that English permeates Java enough that anyone who can program Java has at least some understanding of English, I don't know why replacing the instantiation of a HashMap with a more flowing, "natural" English method call (i.e. replacing a mathematical language with natural language) is beneficial in an open source project. Of course, if the object it creates isn't just a Java HashMap<...>, then the change isn't related to language but to the actual runtime properties of the system. My understanding, however, is that the Maps method above is just a wrapper around "new HashMap<...>()" --Eric
