Bonding
Bonding
This is source code written in the Java programming language which models a parent and a child playing a game of catch .  Normally this game is played with the parent throwing a ball to their child, who catches it and throws it back, and repeated back-and-forth. The comic title "Bonding" refers to the building of relationship between the parent and the child. The joke lies in the puns using the words try , throw , catch , and Throwable .  These can refer to actions in the real-life game, but are also keywords in the Java language that are used for exception handling , a method of signaling error conditions and responding to them.  Also, the terms "parent" and "child" are usually interpreted more abstractly in programming, as generic terms used in hierarchical data structures .
The program, as written, will recursively call the aim method alternately on the parent and the child indefinitely, causing each to take turns throwing and catching the Ball object.  Note that unlike the real game, this program actually has the same person both throwing and catch the same ball on their turn.  The ball is passed onto the other person by aiming it at them, which causes the person to both throw and catch the ball, and aim it back, perpetuating the cycle.  This program will also eventually crash with a stack overflow error.
The title text refers to the Eclipse IDE , which is a tool commonly used to develop software in Java. "Building character" is something that you would expect a parent to do, in order to instill in his child positive traits, such as confidence and athleticism. This is possibly a reference to Calvin and Hobbes , where Calvin's dad often encourages him to build character in a number of ways, including playing baseball. This is made more likely by other references combining technology with Calvin and Hobbes, such as xkcd comics 409: Electric Skateboard (Double Comic) , 702: Snow Tracking and 1002: Game AIs . However, here, "build" might also be a play on the term of " building " a program, while " character " refers to a data type in programming languages. It may also refer to the common notion that programming in C++ or Java builds character due to their powerful but sometimes finicky libraries.
To compile this Java source code, the two classes would need to be in a .java file.
The program defines two classes (types of objects):
The program executes in the following order:
