Making decisions in Java

Our Java code will constantly be making decisions. For example, we might need to know whether the user has new messages or whether they have a certain number of friends. We need to be able to test our variables to see whether they meet certain conditions and then execute a certain section of code depending upon whether they do or not.

In this section, as our code gets more complicated, it helps to present it in a way that makes it more readable. Let's look at code indenting to make our discussion about decisions easier.

Indenting code for clarity

You have probably noticed that the Java code in our projects is indented. For example, the first line of code inside the MainActivity class is indented by one tab. Also, the first line of code is indented inside each method. Here is an annotated screenshot to make this clear and as another quick example:

Figure 8.1 – Indented Java code

Notice also that when the indented...