Default map value

In this post, I’ll explain how to provide a default value when querying an absent key in a hash map in different programming languages. Java Let’s start with Java, my first professional programming language. In older versions, retrieving a value from a map required using the get() method: Map map = new HashMap(); (1) Object value = map.get(new Object()); (2) if (value == null) { value = 'default';