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I got this exercise at the uni, and I thought it's easier if I split the problem: first the logical one (implement the pseudocode from Wikipedia in Python) then the RTFM one (figure out the right Java API).
Of course I wasted the whole evening by not starting working on it, so it was 0:30 when I started. It took about 2 hours to do the Python implementation, and then again two hours to transform it to Java. And of course the code is two times longer. Guess what? One of the guy I talked today was surprised about how short my Java code is. :-P
BTW, the day before I finally got to write git-darcs. An old vision that is now reality. :-)