Hello, Space Explorer! Today, we’re going to discuss a practical and essential topic in Java: managing data using lists and classes. To practice this concept, we will build a simple Student Management System. Specifically, we will create a class that stores students and their grades. This hands-on approach will help us understand how lists and objects can be used effectively in real-world applications. Are you excited? Great, let's dive in!
To accomplish our task, we need to implement three primary methods within our class:
addStudent(String name, int grade): This method allows us to add a new student and their grade to our list. If the student is already on the list, their grade will be updated.getGrade(String name): This method retrieves the grade for a student given their name. If the student is not found, it returnsnull.removeStudent(String name): This method removes a student from the list by their name. It returnstrueif the student is successfully removed andfalseif the student is not found.
Does that sound straightforward? Fantastic, let's break it down step-by-step.
Let’s start by defining our StudentManager class, which will use a list of objects to manage students and their grades. We will also define a  class to represent individual student data.
