[JAVA][Beginning Java 8 Games Development]

Chapter 3 ■ A Java 8 Primer: An Introduction to Java 8 Concepts and Principles
■ ■Definition A “convention” in Java programming is the way that most, if not all, Java programmers will implement a
Java construct. In this case, this is the way that the Java code block commenting is styled.
There is a third type of comment, called a Javadoc comment, which you will not be using in your Java 8 game
development, as your code is intended to be used to create a game, and not to be distributed to the public. If you were
going to write a Java game engine for use by others to create games, that is when you would use Javadoc comments to
add documentation to your Java 8 game engine. A Javadoc comment can be used by the javadoc.exe tool in the JDK
to generate HTML documentation for the Java class containing Javadoc comments, based on the text content that you
put inside the Javadoc comment.
A Javadoc comment is similar to a multiline comment, but it uses instead two asterisks to create the opening
Javadoc comment delimiter, as shown here:
/** This is an example of a Java Documentation (Javadoc) type of Java code comment.
This is a type of comment which will automatically generate Java documentation!
*/
If you wanted to insert a comment right in the middle of your Java statement or programming structure
(which you should never do as a professional Java programmer), use the multiline comment format, like so:
import /* This line of code imports the Stage class */ javafx.stage.Stage;
This will not generate any errors, but would confuse the readers of this code, so do not comment your code in
this way. The following single line comment way of commenting this code, using the double forward slash, would,
however, generate compiler errors in NetBeans 8.0:
import // This line of code imports the Stage class javafx.stage.Stage
Here, the compiler will see only the word import, as the single-line comment goes to the end of the line,
compared with the multiline comment, which is specifically ended using the block comment delimiter sequence
(asterisk and a forward slash). So, the compiler will throw an error for this second improperly commented code,
essentially asking, “Import what?”
Just as the Java programming language uses the double forward slash and slash-asterisk pairing to delimit the
comments in your Java code, so too a couple of other key characters are used to delimit Java programming statements
as well as entire blocks of Java programming logic (I often call these Java code structures).
The semicolon is used in Java (all versions) to delimit or separate Java programming statements, such as the
package and import statements seen in Figure 3-1. The Java compiler looks for a Java keyword, which starts a Java
statement, and then takes everything after that keyword, up to the semicolon (which is the way to tell the Java
compiler, “I am done coding this Java statement”), as being part of the Java code statement. For instance, to declare
the Java package at the top of your Java application, you use the Java package keyword, the name of your package, and
then a semicolon, as follows (see also Figure 3-1):
package invincibagel;
Import statements are delimited using the semicolon as well, as can be seen in the figure. The import statement
provides the import keyword, the package and class to be imported, and, finally, the semicolon delimiter, as shown
in the following Java programming statement:
import javafx.application.Application;
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