Java Best Practices

“Java Best Practices” is a comprehensive guide that delves into the optimal strategies and techniques for proficient Java programming. The document explores essential practices to enhance code quality, performance, and maintainability in Java development. It covers topics such as efficient data structures, error handling, design patterns, and optimization methods. By drawing insights from various sources, the guide offers valuable recommendations to Java developers on how to write robust, scalable, and efficient code. It serves as a valuable resource for individuals looking to elevate their Java programming skills and adhere to industry best practices.

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Beware of boxing

Java Best Practices

Boxing / Unboxing is when Java converts primitives to and from reference types, for example, converting between int and Integer types. This is often done automatically through the process known as aut...

Characteristics of good API

Java Best Practices

As software engineers we write code every day, and it is inconceivable that this code would ever exist in a vacuum, isolated from all other software ever written. Never has the 'standing on the should...

The importance of consistency

Java Best Practices

Very rarely these days does software get developed by a single person, and even if it did, the human condition is so fickle that what they deem is great one day may be considered dead wrong the next (...

Use the latest Java Long-Term Support release

Java Best Practices

Java releases are made every six months in a 'feature-release-train' model, rather than having a major release planned for every two to four years as historically was the case. This rapid release cade...

A little copying is better than a new dependency

Java Best Practices

Libraries typically take an evolutionary path and grow in functionality over time, and it is often the case that if the library we depend on were decomposed into separate smaller libraries, we might b...

Avoid shading dependencies

Java Best Practices

Shading is the term given to the process of including dependencies within our JAR at build time, by copying an entire library out of its separate JAR file, renaming packages, and updating code in our ...

Make use of logging APIs

Java Best Practices

Having a good logging story in all Java applications can be a real lifesaver when something goes wrong. The challenge is learning what to log and how to use the logging frameworks to their full potent...

Use semantic versioning

Java Best Practices

Semantic versioning is a well-specified convention used by many software projects, although admittedly the extent to which the convention is followed can vary considerably between projects. In essence...

Minimize API

Java Best Practices

In the previous best practice, we covered the importance of minimizing API visibilty . This spoke to the importance of not leaking our implementation out into public API, and being very conscious of h...

Release to Maven Central

Java Best Practices

Maven Central is the place where developers go to get Java libraries, and it is where any library that a user is expected to use should be uploaded. Requiring users to retrieve a dependency from a dif...

Publish BOMs for multi-module projects

Java Best Practices

When we build libraries for others to use, we are often in the fortunate position where our work is entirely encapsulated within a single library. This makes communicating to users of our library abou...

Don't float dependency versions

Java Best Practices

Libraries are developed by people who work with different philosophies to our own when it comes to breaking changes, release schedules, and so on. Build tooling almost universally has support for spec...