Controversial Java cliches

2012-12-31

Controversial Java cliches

1) Using underscore _ in Java identifiers is lame

This stupid cliche comes from the times when Java was replacing C++. Every typical thing which was used in C++ was lame and must have had been done the other way. so, instead of get_whatever(), you write getWhatever(). I'm okay with that.

But some people didn't get it right and started thinking that you can't use underscore, neva-eva. Well, you can. And it's very appropriate sometimes. Consider DAO classes:

public interface FooDAO {
  public Foo getFoo();
  public List<Foo> getAllFoo_OrderByName();
  public List<Foo> getAllFoo_OrderByAge();
}

The underscores make the method names much more readable. Of course, you could parametrize that – but why not implement a method for use cases used in 95% of overall DAO usage. Leave parametrization to low-level APIs.

2) Using goto statement in Java is lame

Wrong, again. The so-called „Java goto statement“, or labeled break, is very useful for certain cases of flow control.

foo:
for( String s : strings ){
  for( int i = 0; i < s.length(); i++ ){
    if( s.charAt(i) == '@' )
      break foo;
  }
}

It's just a shorter syntax for not-so-smart handling of everything in if {...} else {...}. I still don't get this hypocrisy of some people who fall in love with Scala or Groovy which are full of various syntax shortcuts of the same kind, but yell hysterically when they see this.

3) Gathering CONSTANTS in interfaces

…is percieved by some people as misuse. However, it makes perfect sense semantically too: public constants are a part of API, aka application programming interface.

4) Inner classes in interfaces

This is perfectly cool if you want to use interface implementation's met­hods in e.g. default implementations of some algorithms. Some people don't understand the advantage of this possibility and consider this as a bad practice, without any rationale.

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