Elements of Java Coding Styles

Java Coding Styles: Here are some of the tricks which I felt useful for java developers & I have been using them a lot. Again these are personal preferences, consider what you like & disdain if you don't. By end of the day the software professional is all about getting "good working software, quickly and at low cost" that can sustain for longer time & solves the business problem at hand (with YAGNI caveat). I want to keep updating this whenever I see interesting ones.

Prefer smaller methods
They look beautiful, easy to understand/reuse/change & test.

'As I did 20 years ago, I still fervently believe that the only way to make software secure, reliable, and fast is to make it small.' - Andrew Tanenbaum

Dr. Venkat gives wonderful explanation on - how to convince your fellow developer to write short methods?

Use JUnit test cases; assert statements and method/variable names as documentation, writing comments in JavaDoc are obsolete and useless many a times.

The purpose of the assert statement is to give you a way to catch program errors early, using assertions to state things you know (or think you know) about your program can improve readability & are great in serving as comments, they are intended to be cheap to write, just drop them into your code any time you think of them. They are great tool of communication for a programmer & can get rid of dumb English stuff in the code with // & /** */.

"There is nothing as useless as doing efficiently, which should not be done at all." - Peter Drucker.

I hate to hear someone telling me to add javadoc comments especially for private methods. The method name variable name should be wise enough to reveal the intent. Fluent interface & design pattern can help a lot in naming variables, methods & class names. Over the years my variable & function names have become more verbose. It's so much easier to understand code from years ago when it reads like a sentence.

Big caveat with respect to assertions,

Assertions should be used to specify things that to be true at various points in your program for providing the documentation & definitely NOT for error checking and any active code. Assertions are disabled ("turned off") by default. Assertions were introduced in Java1.4 & can be turned on with -enableassertions (or -ea) flag on the java command line.

& for JavaDoc,

Code that isn't fully documented is unfinished and potentially useless. Javadoc comments on methods and classes should normally indicate what the method or class

It was necessary document the type of keys and values in a Map, as well as the Map's purpose, but now with Java5 Generics that is also not required. Prior to Generics I always used to code List/*String*/ = new ArrayList();

Some Java 5 features are smart; Look for smarter new libraries that exploit these features well

Use basic infrastructure libraries like Google Collections (I prefer this over apache collections), sl4j, Guice etc… as much as possible. We will learn to appreciate the value of Java-5 new features by looking into the source code of these libraries, Old coding styles have to be abandoned in favor new features.

Commenting the code with "if(false)"

In many a times we want to use different implementation for testing & commenting out code temporarily. If the method is very long it's painful to comment out the whole block. Let us say we have method like this.

public void sendMail(){

if(true) return;

// Lot of code for adding to database to event

...

// Transforming text with XSL etc...

....

}

if(true) return; -> This line has the same impact as the commenting out the whole stuff :)

Use double brace initialization (For non-performance intensive code), If possible use Google Collections in all the cases.

As swing programmer I have been using these quite long time. I have seen quite number of experienced java programmers aren't aware this. This really useful while testing. It's concise, requires less typing & more readable but comes with cost. Google Collections provide better same feature without any performance cost.

Map map = new HashMap() {{ 

    put(1, "one");     

    put(2, "two");    

    put(3, "three");     

    put(4, "four");     

    put(5, "five"); 

}};

Use protected & final where ever possible

Using final does not make much sense from performance point of view as modern JVM is intelligent enough to make use them efficiently, but still I feel they have lot of value in making the intent clear & in multi threading simple with im-mutable state.

Usage of "private" is over-rated & I think it's better to have it has protected making setting the code simpler.

Person p = new Person(){{

age=30; name="Suresh";

}}

where age & name are protected variables.

More & more you start using inner classes, you will get frustrate with java for lack of "closures" & will eventually move to Groovy or Scala (Like me :-))

Use Null Object Pattern & throw IllegalArguementException wherever applicable

The Null Object provides intelligent do nothing behaviour that helps to avoid problems with Null references (NPEs) & so called "A billion dollar irreversible mistake"

Prefer Unchecked Exception over Checked Exception

90% of time Unchecked Exception makes more sense than the Checked Exception. This is one of the most significant attribute of successful libraries like Spring & Hibernate. Use Checked Exception for recoverable errors (Business Exception) & Unchecked for remaining stuff.

Understand Soft, Weak and Phantom references in Java

WeakReference is a reference which doesn't have enough force to prevent Garbage Collector(GC) deleting object - Useful for caching

Soft Reference behaves like weak references, except when GC determines object is softly reachable & can be used to avoid OutOfMemoryError.

Phantom references are enqueued when objects are deleted from memory and get()method always returns null to prevent resurrecting object. So phantom references are good for determining exactly when object is deleted from memory.

__________________

Interesting quotes from Rock star programmers that I collected.

"Write lots of code. Have fun with it!" — Joshua Bloch

"Learn to use your tools. And I don't mean just enough to get by. I mean really learn how to use your tools." — Tor Norbye

"Don't use line numbers. Don't put your entire application in one method." — Chet Haase

"Don't be overwhelmed by the language or the platform." — Raghavan Srinivas (In the same line Neal Ford says "When you were hired by your current employer, you may think it's because of your winning personality, your dazzling smile, or your encyclopedic knowledge of Java. But it's not. You were hired for your ability to sit and concentrate for long periods of time to solve problems")

"Millions of people have been employed because someone at Sun Microsystems invented Java." - Masood Mortazavi. Master it & you will never regret for that

"There will always be opportunities for great engineers, but as I said earlier, I think the number of these opportunities will shrink as other, less technical personnel play larger roles in the software-development process, using more productive, higher-level tools and frameworks than we have used in the past." - Ben Galbraith

"Google makes finding information easier than ever, but nothing beats interacting with an expert."- Ben Galbraith. So always associate with people from whom you think you can learn.

From Pragmatic Thinking & Learning

There is no expertise without experience.It takes something on the order of ten years/ 10,000 hours
of practice to be expert in a field Deliberate, thoughtful practice is what makes the difference—not
just going through the motions.Practice doesn't make perfect, but it does make permanent:
neuroplasticity will cause your brain to re-wire itself according to what you do.You may not become
what you dream, or what you aspire to be, but you will become what you do.Unfortunately there is no substitute for hard work.

References:

http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/Interviews/studentdevs/index.html?intcmp=2225

http://www.agiledeveloper.com/blog/PermaLink.aspx?guid=8a745e85-2a34-4d9c-8c25-ca371530e281 - How to convince your fellow developer to write short methods?

http://weblog.raganwald.com/2007/04/rails-style-creators-in-java-or-how-i.html - Rails style initializers

http://www.refactory.org/s/double_brace_initialisation/view/latest

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?DoubleBraceInitialization

http://bwinterberg.blogspot.com/2009/09/introduction-to-google-collections.html

http://thestrangeloop.com/sessions/ghost-virtual-machine-reference-references

http://juixe.com/techknow/index.php/2009/11/18/favorite-programming-quotes-2009/

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/top_10_software_engineer_traits.php