Matthew Park

Michael Matola wrote:So I got the 13-inch with the base processor (2.7GHz) and the 256GB of storage. You see such a model on this page, priced at $1499

http://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/specs-retina/

That page shows standard configurations that they stock at Apple stores and are generally available for immediate shipping when purchased online.

But if you go ahead and start the purchase process by clicking the Buy Now link or just going to this page

http://store.apple.com/us/buy-mac/macbook-pro

then clicking Select, you get Built to Order (BTO) options, where, for example, you can increase the RAM to 16GB for $200, which is what I did. So the final price was $1699. (Actually it was lower for me because I'm eligible for the educational discount.) You can bump up the processor on that screen too. If you want more storage, you'd need to pick that a few screens back. BTOs generally take a few weeks to arrive. Note that you can have them delivered to your local Apple store, and they'll let you know when it arrives at the store.

I tend to use a computer for a long time before replacing, so it makes sense for me to bump up the memory on initial purchase, especially when dealing with a computer whose memory is not upgradeable.

Wow..Thanks for the detailed reply, Michael.
I really appreciate your help.

Michael Matola wrote:Heh. I bought a new Mac (Book Pro) in the fall with 16GB RAM. I am not sorry!

Good for you, Michael!
It's a surprise to found out MacBook with 16GB RAM.
How much did you pay for it? What about the processor? SSD size? or other specifications?

Jeanne Boyarsky wrote:As a reference point, I have 8GB RAM and my Eclipse is fine.

So the 8GB would be enough for using Eclipse. I may consider buying a new Mac in the near future with higher RAM. Thanks.

Andrew Monkhouse wrote:It's also worthwhile looking at what plugins you have running in Eclipse. If you don't need a particular plugin then either delete it or disable it. The more plugins, the slower it is to start, and the more work it does.

I already disabled all of them and I guess the problem I'm experiencing is due to 'lack of memory'. Anyway thank you for your advice ;)

Bear Bibeault wrote:There is a program called Activity Monitor in the Applications/Utilities folder that can help you look at CPU and memory usage.

4G isn't a lot of memory, but things still shouldn't be that slow. (That said, I don't use eclipse).

If your Air is expandable, more memory will always help.

Unfortunately, mine is not expandable but I'll take it into account. Thank you.

Jeanne Boyarsky wrote:It shouldn't take that long. Can you check if your machine is maxed out on CPU or memory when you are trying to compile? I suspect memory.

Come to think of it, you may be right. I admit that sometimes ,whether I do some coding with Eclipse or Terminal, programs would be compiled in few seconds.
From now on, I will check my memory when I want to compile something. Thank you for your fast reply:)

...but I still don't get it why Eclipse is much, much slower at start up on my Mac than on other PCs at my University even though I double checked that my MacBook's memory's okay.
It usually takes around 5 minutes just to open Eclipse.

Hi there.
I have a MacBook Air(13-inch, Late 2010) and want to program in Java on OS X(Yosemite).
The problem is, the Eclipse which is already installed on my Mac is terribly slow.
It is slow not only at start up but also after the start up.
Irritated, I switched to using Terminal instead of using the IDE.
It was okay to write some code with Terminal. I mean, there was no delay whenever I do some coding with it.
But when I type "javac filename.java" on command line to compile a program, it takes looong time even for a very simple program.
I used to use Terminal when I had studied C language and at that time, I hadn't felt any problems using it.
I know C is mostly faster than Java but even then I still don't understand why "hello world" program takes around 10 seconds to be compiled both on Eclipse and Terminal.

The following is the specifications of my Mac

Processor: 2.13 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
Memory: 4GB 1067 MHz DDR3
SSD: 256GB

Any help would be appreciated..!

Philip Thamaravelil wrote:The alternative is to use getters and setters. The value behind getters and setters is they hide the implementation details behind a given class.

For example, if you have a Person class to store some information. You could set static variables for firstName or lastName. But getters and setters allow us to apply behind the scenes business logic seamlessly to the calling class..

The getFirstName or getLastName methods could ... Check for null.. do Max length handling... etc..



Plus, you should read about thread synchronization in Java. Storing variables as static isn't thread safe.

Cheers,
Philip

hmm...getters ansd setters......static isn't thread safe.........
Now I got it. Thank you.

Jeanne Boyarsky wrote:Matthew,
I can see why it would seem that way at first. Especially in small programs.

But then you get to larger programs and writing objects. In fact, you are probably using some right now. For example, suppose you want to create a List of Strings. If you only want one List, statics are fine. But what if you wanted two lists. You'd need to write something like:
List<String> list1 = new ArrayList<String>(); List<String> list2 = new ArrayList<String>(); list1.add("a"); list2.add("b");

If List didn't have instance variables, you couldn't have two lists. You'd be limited to one list for your whole program. As you write objects yourself, you'd run into the same problem.

I didn't study GUI yet, but I guess your explanation works for me.
Maybe I should learn more... Thank you Jeanne!

Hi, I just studied what 'static' keyword means in java - "Sharable"

I'm totally a beginner and have usually seen an error "non-static method *** cannot be referenced from a static context"

But since I started to use static keyword all the time - when defining variables and methods - I've never met any errors related to static keyword.

And here's my question, just like the title of this subject, isn't it convenient to use static variables and static methods all the time?

Why do Java need instance variables/methods?

I think it is more useful for coding without instance variables/methods.

I want to know when should I use static variables/methods and when should not and why should not use it in such cases.



Have a nice day!

Jesper de Jong wrote:

Matthew Park wrote:I think it's a little bit tough for me to read it since I opened it with wordpad

Wordpad is a simple word processor. It is not suited for editing source code. Instead of Wordpad, use a good text editor with syntax highlighting such as Notepad++.

What a cool application! Thank you Jesper.
Notepad++ is a text editor I dreamed of.

Matthew Brown wrote:In some programming languages, a method is entirely identified by its name. In those languages you couldn't have multiple methods taking different arguments (though some do allow optional arguments, so it can look as if they do).

But Java isn't like that. In Java a method is identified by its "signature", which is the name and the types of the parameters. So the method set(int, int) and the method set(int, int, int) are completely separate methods. As would be set(String, Object) if it existed. As Darryl says, this is called "method overloading".

You can have overloaded methods doing completely different things - as I said, they are different methods. But that's usually a bad idea because it will just confuse people. More commonly, they are intended to do roughly the same thing, but with different inputs.

Here's another example you've probably already used: System.out.println(x). That works regardless of whether x is an int, a double, a boolean, a String etc. If you look at the PrintStream class (which is the type of System.out) you'll find that there are lots of different versions of println() declared, for every possible type it might be given.

Wow, this is the answer I wanted.
Thank you for your kind explanation.
Now I can understand what method overloading is.

Darryl Burke wrote:It's called method overloading.

Oh, and you can read the source of the Calendar class to see what's there; look in the file src.zip in your JDK install folder.

I looked in the file you mentioned.
I think it's a little bit tough for me to read it since I opened it with wordpad
Anyway, You'd been great help Darryl. Thank you very much!

Winston Gutkowski wrote:

Matthew Park wrote:Well, I told you it might be a QUITE SILLY question.

Never apologise for asking questions, no matter how "SILLY" you might think they are.

As they say on Jeopardy: it's only easy if you KNOW the answer. And one of history's greatest thinkers (Socrates) created an entire learning system based around "silly" questions.

Winston

You may be right, Winston. Thank you for teaching me important lesson.
Enjoy the rest of your day!

Hello again, I should first let you know I am a totally beginner.

I tried to write my own class to test my thought but my programming ability is too short to enable it.

Now I will explain I was studying about predefined Java method and found something interesting.

In java.util.Calendar class, there is a set() method which is for setting the Calendar object to a specific date and time.

We can use it like this:

Calendar dueDate = Calendar.getInstance(); dueDate.set(2008, 0, 1); //January 1st, 2008 dueDate.set(Calendar.MONTH, 6); //July 1st, 2008

Here's my question.
Does this mean two set() methods - one using three parameters(I mean, maybe inputs? I'm not sure what should I call them yet.) and the other using two parameters - were predefined?
How can this be possible - two methods holding same method name in common while their number of inputs are different?
Could somebody explain about how this works please?
Well, I told you it might be a QUITE SILLY question.