Class Stubs

BankAccount.java

public class BankAccount { public BankAccount() {} public void deposit(int amount) {} public void withdraw(int amount) {} public int getBalance() { return 0; } public String toString() { return ""; } }

Designing classes belongs to the most challenging arts in software development.

To get a feeling for a design candidate it might be helpful to write a class stub first. This is a class which is stripped from its implementation but can be still compiled.

This is achieved by shorten all method bodies to {} or to { return ...; }.

Instance variables and private methods can be postponed. At this stage, only the public accessible part of a class is of interest.

While its compilation result is not useful, it might be helpful to see possible error messages by the compiler early.

It is also possible now to attempt to compile other classes that use this class.

	Designing classes belongs to the most challenging arts in software development.
	To get a feeling for a design candidate it might be helpful to write a class stub first. This is a class which is stripped from its implementation but can be still compiled.
	This is achieved by shorten all method bodies to `{}` or to `{ return ...; }`.
	Instance variables and private methods can be postponed. At this stage, only the public accessible part of a class is of interest.
	While its compilation result is not useful, it might be helpful to see possible error messages by the compiler early.
	It is also possible now to attempt to compile other classes that use this class.