I know what all of these do except for abstract. I'm currently in the process of teaching myself java with what I consider a middle-school-level education (my highschool was in a bad neighborhood so I got shafted)...
But what exactly are the usage patterns for these keywords? When do I use what? When do I omit them? Putting 'public' in front of my classes makes every class that uses it require a new file, can I just omit that if I want to create a monolithic source file?
Every bit of information I look up, explains exactly WHAT these do, just doesn't give a clear view of when/why/where I should use them.
Thanks in advance, Anthony
For beginners, here are my rules of thumb:
I would strongly suggest you fight the urge to use one monolithic source file. Try to keep methods shorter than one screenful, and classes shorter than 300 lines.