Strong Typed Programming

Abstract

As we have learned at the beginning of this book in Part I, the Java programming language has defined the integer, double, Boolean, String, etc., as basic types. In Java, we cannot assign any value to a variable without defining the variable with a type beforehand. Only after a variable has been defined clearly by a type—for example, integer—are we then allowed to assign an integer value to it and start using it as an integer in the calculation. Once a variable's type is defined, it cannot be assigned a value with a different type, logically speaking. For instance, if a variable is defined as Boolean, it cannot be assigned an integer value. Otherwise, we will get a type mismatch compilation error.