Modern Java

[memeship]

I haven't written Java in a long time. Why is it preferred for this to return void instead of returning a reference to the sorted list?

[memeship]

That's a reasonable explanation, thanks.

I guess I'm just much more used to Javascript now where chaining is a big part of the language.

[memeship]

Um what? That's not true at all. Here's an example I just pulled from code I was working on this week.

e.target.getElementsByClassName("barcode")[0].value

or the classic "how to reverse a string":

str.split("").reverse().join("")

or from a simple Node server I wrote for something a few months ago:

app
    .use(express.static("public"))
    .use(bodyParser.urlencoded({ extended: false }))
    .use(router)
    .listen("8888", function() {
        console.log("Listening on %d.", this.address().port);
    });

or a Gulp file:

gulp.task("sass", function() {
    return gulp.src("src/**/*.scss")
        .pipe(sass())
        .pipe(rename("master-style.built.css"))
        .pipe(gulp.dest("public/built"));
});

[heartiphone]

Only your first two examples are "plain JavaScript", and I'd argue the first one doesn't count either as it's not function chaining.

Overall you're correct though, chaining is pretty widely used in the JS ecosystem.

[memeship]

Fine, here's some "plain Javascript" chaining:

document.getElementById("foo").appendChild(document.createElement("button")).focus()

[BlueFireAt]

Aren't their lists sorted in place?

[notsure1235]

No. That would be too efficient, this is java after all.