Yes. Exceptions shouldn't be used for flow control. In a real setting, you'd probably parse it as a long (and possibly catch that exception) then check the size for the actual type.

That being said, it is really easy to see what is happening, which is good.

And it looks pretty. :-)

Wouldn't the code be slower because of the try-catch check?

Bastante practico

There is no real convention, no.

My rule of thumb is that if it makes the code cleaner and easier to read and maintain (this last point being the most important), then use streams. If not, then use normal loop iteration.

not for this task, way too slow

A negative index will eventually throw a NullPointerException when the nodes run out.

Wow, Nice one.

could i ask how one would go about learning about functions that can do this stuff because this is the first time ive encountered it

Parenthesis are unnecessary since && has higher precedence than ||