Stop! Yes, that is a call for you if you are one of those offshore java developers who have been using any of the following techniques in their development ventures. Here’s a comprehensive overview of top 10 things that no Java developer should do again in the course of his career.
Cast: Using cast is no more a necessity, neither a requisite. But unfortunately some libraries have yet not understood this fact and are still using cast. Then of course, there are legacy codes. It is time to look for alternatives for cast and Java Generics is one of the several suggestions. Generics might not be able to provide solutions to some ‘off-edge’ programming cases, but otherwise it is a good option, especially when we are speaking of eliminating cast.
Writing Sort Algorithm: Self-sorting is a sin, which is most often committed by offshore Java developers who don’t notice that Java already offers the sort algorithm feature that they require or those who are unaware of the Comparator and Comparable operations. Its time you go forth and read about the functioning of these operations, not wasting any more of your valuable time in sorting algorithm all by yourself.
Using Date or Calendar for Date Calculations: Time runs too fast and there is no point wasting it in calculating date and time using JDK date and time classes. Except for the case that you are developing your code on a X86 assembler, there is no way you can enjoy the date arithmetic using JDK class. These in-built classes are not intuitive and provide the most primitive features. Replace these with a more contemporary library such as JODA Time.
Write PL/SQL on a Transaction System: Over a period of time, your business logic will be shifted to RDBMS and your device transaction will shift into the database. Someone then, might turn it into a something that resembles COBOL. Crux of the story is, within sometime you will be having an untraceable legacy system. If you are an Oracle investor, it is a good news for you, if not you might not like what you just read.
Configure Session Replication: We are in 2013, so enough of using HTTPSession for anything at all. The distributed cache projects and products have clubbed themselves under the NoSQL Key-Value stores. Let’s just switch to Javascript/AJAX if we are looking for scalable and reliable applications that will not poise us with any midnight exceptions. It is time to work with something which is faster and better.
Constructing an Object and Transverse a Resultset: We understand that you wouldn’t be using ORMs because they are bad and once you read it on some blog that some developer once had some performance issues with hibernate. So, you are relying on hand-coding, which will obviously make things better. But using JDBCT Template or some other alternative is also a good idea.
Using Swing Application: It seems as if Java is just not meant for front end. Admit it, Swing is quite slow. Moreover, it is unpleasant and makes GUI look like cartoon representations of native GUIs. And then of course, there is Java Sandbox tool, to say the least.
This New Year, it should be more like a resolution for every Java developer to not to use the aforementioned techniques and make Java development a better endeavor.