Java Errors & Edge Cases
Exceptions at the points where they stop behaving the way you assumed: a finally block that discards the exception unwinding through it, a map lookup that throws on the way into an int, a class that fails once and reports a missing definition forever after. Ten spines on the paths your happy-path code never takes.
Who it is for
Writes the happy path well.
The behaviour people get wrong after they are already productive in the language.
You will get the most out of it if you have written Java recently enough to read it without effort, and have been surprised by it at least once. If you are picking the language up for the first time, start with Java Essentials and come back to this one.
It is also built for interview preparation: the questions are the ones that get asked because they separate people who have read the documentation from people who have hit the behaviour in production.
How long it takes
90 graded questions at roughly 45 seconds each is about 68 minutes of answering in total.
At the default five questions a day, and because the session mixes in your other courses, expect around 18 days — call it 3 weeks — to see everything once, plus a few weeks of thinning reviews after that before it is all mastered.
A question is mastered on the third correct answer, once the gap between reviews has grown past a week — so a course cannot be finished in a weekend however long you sit with it.
Question mix
- 60 multiple choice
- 10 concept cards
- 10 predict the output
- 10 put it in order
- 10 matching questions
Syllabus
What you will be asked about
-
01
Checked and Unchecked
Decide which exceptions the compiler forces you to handle, and why that line sits where it does.
-
02
What finally Can Overrule
Predict what a caller receives when a finally block returns, throws or mutates.
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03
Resources and Suppression
Trace the close order, the null guard and the suppressed exception that try-with-resources generates.
-
04
Catch Ordering and Multi-catch
Work out which catch clause fires, and which arrangements the compiler refuses outright.
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05
Null, Boxing and the NPE
Spot exactly where an absent value is unboxed, and where a null travels safely.
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06
Erasure and ClassCastException
Explain why a ClassCastException lands on a line with no cast in it.
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07
Custom Exceptions and Causes
Wire a custom exception's message and cause so a wrapped failure stays diagnosable.
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08
When Class Initialisation Fails
Trace a failing static initialiser from ExceptionInInitializerError to the NoClassDefFoundError that follows.
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09
Error Against Exception
Tell apart the failures your code can recover from and the ones the JVM raises about itself.
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10
Exceptions and Control Flow
Trace which exit from a try statement survives, and which one quietly discards a failure.
8 more topics, and all 90 questions
Java Errors & Edge Cases is a Pro course. One subscription opens it and every other course in the catalogue, including the ones still being written.
A question from this course
Checked and Unchecked
What happens when you compile this?
public class Main {
static void nap() {
Thread.sleep(0);
}
public static void main(String[] args) {
nap();
System.out.println("done");
}
}Show the answer
D It does not compile: unreported exception InterruptedException
You may have expected this to run, since sleep(0) cannot plausibly fail. The compiler does not reason about whether the exception can happen; Thread.sleep is declared throws InterruptedException, which is checked, so every call site must catch it or declare it. The error lands on nap, not on main, because that is where the unhandled call is.
The rest of the track
Java at every depth
Java Essentials
The behaviour underneath the ceremony: what a variable really holds, why 1/2 is 0, and why two Strings that look identical are not always the same object. Ten spines on the code that compiles cleanly and still does something else.
Java Core
Where Java trips developers who use it every day: autoboxing that hides a NullPointerException, a ternary that quietly unboxes, and dispatch rules that pick a method before the program runs. Ten spines on the gap between what the code says and what the JVM does.
Java Data & Collections
The collections framework taken seriously: which container promises what, why remove(1) deletes a position, and how a mutated key disappears from its own HashMap. Ten spines on the containers you use every day and the contracts underneath them.
Java Standard Library
The library people reimplement by hand: what split really returns, StringBuilder, Optional, streams and collectors, comparators, java.time, the Objects helpers and text blocks. Ten built-ins that already do the job, and one behaviour in each that is not the one you assumed.
Java Idioms & Pitfalls
The Java people write out of habit that is wrong or dated: raw types, boxed equality, catching Exception, building strings in a loop, arrays where a List belongs and getters that hand out the field. Ten habits, each one run to see what it actually does.
Java Advanced
The traps a confident Java reader still walks into: erasure, wildcard variance, dispatch decided before the program runs, and a constructor that sees a field before it is assigned. Ten spines of code that compiles cleanly and behaves otherwise.
Java Performance
What actually costs on the JVM, read off code rather than a stopwatch: the allocation that never happens, the concat loop that copies everything twice, the map that rehashes sixteen times on its way to a million entries. Ten spines on the difference between the operation you wrote and the work the VM does.
Java Testing
What a Java test actually asserts, and where that claim is weaker than it looks. Argument order and failure messages, the three kinds of equality, deltas, throwing, fixtures and static state, test doubles, and the difference between a failure and an error.
Java Interview Questions
The Java an interviewer actually probes, answered from the rules rather than from memory. The equals and hashCode contract, the string pool, references and boxing, collections, erasure, checked exceptions, dispatch, immutability, and the what-does-this-print questions behind them.
Start Java Errors & Edge Cases
in tomorrow’s session.
Enrol and this course joins your daily five, mixed in with everything else you are studying — 90 questions spread over about 18 days rather than dropped on you at once.
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