If you are a Java developer in early phases of your career, here are some concepts you should read about and learn to be an outstanding Java developer.
All books have been written about these concepts. We will just summarise them here and encourage you to find and read more about them.
1. Thread Safety
All web-applications are multi-threaded applications. If you didn’t know, read about how application containers e.g. Tomcat start a new thread or pick one from a thread pool, to render a new web request. Thread safety is about ensuring access to shared resources is serializable. The most common thread safety mistake? Declaring a private field on a singleton class in your application which is changed by multiple threads.
2. Functional Programming
This came late to Java, specifically in version 1.8. But you should learn and use Streams & Lambda functions in your programs. They make for readable, elegant & concise code, often with improved performance.
3. Thread Local variables
Thread safety was about accessing shared variables safely. Thread local allows you to do just that. Think of them as a HashMap of variables by thread id. However, handle their initialization and clean up with care, especially when using thread pools or you can get into thread safety issues and memory leaks.
4. Mapped Diagnostic Contexts in Logging
Underlying, this works as a thread local variable. But you don’t have to worry about it because most logging frameworks will support it out of the box. The idea is to start and end contexts when logging messages. For instance, at the entry of a request, you can log the API URL and user id, so the logs inside would always carry that context.
Underlying, this works as a thread local variable. But you don’t have to worry about it because most logging frameworks will support it out of the box. The idea is to start and end contexts when logging messages. For instance, at the entry of a request, you can log the API URL and user id, so the logs inside would always carry that context.
5. Understand ClasspathIt
seems easy. But can cause problems or be the reason for some weird effects such as – Why does this work on my local but not on production? It may be because of class-path ordering wherein a production application container loaders an older jar from a shared class-path.
seems easy. But can cause problems or be the reason for some weird effects such as – Why does this work on my local but not on production? It may be because of class-path ordering wherein a production application container loaders an older jar from a shared class-path.
6. Class-path & Class Loaders
Class loaders work as a hierarchy. Learn about class-loaders that come with running an application in tomcat. Find if the same class can be loaded twice in memory and how.
Class loaders work as a hierarchy. Learn about class-loaders that come with running an application in tomcat. Find if the same class can be loaded twice in memory and how.
7. Hot Loading
Did you know JVM supports hot reloading of Java classes? You change the code and then don’t have to re-compile everything and restart the application. Just the class changed is recompiled and its in-memory byte-code is updated. Find which cases this can happen and configure it in your development environment if you haven’t already.
Did you know JVM supports hot reloading of Java classes? You change the code and then don’t have to re-compile everything and restart the application. Just the class changed is recompiled and its in-memory byte-code is updated. Find which cases this can happen and configure it in your development environment if you haven’t already.
8. Dependency Injection
You don’t call me. I call you. That’s inversion of control and the principle behind dependency injection, popularised by Spring Framework. You already knew it, but do you know the alternative to dependency injection? Learn and understand why dependency injection is better and leads to more extensible and testable code.
You don’t call me. I call you. That’s inversion of control and the principle behind dependency injection, popularised by Spring Framework. You already knew it, but do you know the alternative to dependency injection? Learn and understand why dependency injection is better and leads to more extensible and testable code.
9. Properties
You know about properties files. But what are the principles to decide if something should be a system property, an environment variable or a command line argument? The hint is in runtime i.e. when does the property become available and is provided. Nevertheless, you should know how to accept and use each and override when needed e.g. in a test environment.
You know about properties files. But what are the principles to decide if something should be a system property, an environment variable or a command line argument? The hint is in runtime i.e. when does the property become available and is provided. Nevertheless, you should know how to accept and use each and override when needed e.g. in a test environment.
10. Fat Jar Deployment
Most application frameworks, spring boot comes to mind, have an embedded container deployment mode. That is a DevOps friendly way to deploy on the cloud, instead of tweaking application container settings. Even if there is an operations team managing deployment for you, learn it as its the way forward.
Most application frameworks, spring boot comes to mind, have an embedded container deployment mode. That is a DevOps friendly way to deploy on the cloud, instead of tweaking application container settings. Even if there is an operations team managing deployment for you, learn it as its the way forward.
11. ORM & Persistence
ORM (JPA & Hibernate) give you convenience and power. And often people shoot themselves in their leg with it. Learn to use them responsibly and without performance impact. Transaction boundaries, Lazy vs Eager fetching, different types of caching and how to debug performance. But most importantly, when not to use an ORM and just write a SQL query. Hint – when the amount of data is large or is distributed in too many tables.
ORM (JPA & Hibernate) give you convenience and power. And often people shoot themselves in their leg with it. Learn to use them responsibly and without performance impact. Transaction boundaries, Lazy vs Eager fetching, different types of caching and how to debug performance. But most importantly, when not to use an ORM and just write a SQL query. Hint – when the amount of data is large or is distributed in too many tables.
12. Fault Tolerance and Isolation
Let’s say one of your application API calls another rest API. If the other rest API becomes slow, will your application go down? It will. Because of the slow API, all threads will be consumed and your application will become unresponsive. So design it to be fault tolerant with proper timeouts. You can make it more robust by using Resilience4j that allows setting up retry & fallback, circuit breakers, rate limiters and more.
Let’s say one of your application API calls another rest API. If the other rest API becomes slow, will your application go down? It will. Because of the slow API, all threads will be consumed and your application will become unresponsive. So design it to be fault tolerant with proper timeouts. You can make it more robust by using Resilience4j that allows setting up retry & fallback, circuit breakers, rate limiters and more.
13. Deployment and run-time environment
Do you know how your application works in production? Whether its a Paas like Heroku or Iaas like AWS, you should know the memory available, available CPUs, disk latency, network latency within different components to design a performant application.
Do you know how your application works in production? Whether its a Paas like Heroku or Iaas like AWS, you should know the memory available, available CPUs, disk latency, network latency within different components to design a performant application.
14. Monitoring
Will you know if some API in your application is slow? What are the key performance indicators you should monitor? You can use an APM provider like New Relic, or build your own health checks and metrics using spring boot actuator.
Will you know if some API in your application is slow? What are the key performance indicators you should monitor? You can use an APM provider like New Relic, or build your own health checks and metrics using spring boot actuator.
15. Build Lifecycle and Dependency Management
Can you configure a new java project by hand using Maven or Gradle? Setup development and production environment configuration, create build lifecycles tasks to run checkstyle or find bugs, create build commands to run test-cases and generate coverage and so on.
Can you configure a new java project by hand using Maven or Gradle? Setup development and production environment configuration, create build lifecycles tasks to run checkstyle or find bugs, create build commands to run test-cases and generate coverage and so on.
16. Debugging Setup
Many developers do not know how to set this up. This is a must when running test-cases, but JVM also allows remote debugging by opening up a port your IDE can connect to. Learn how to set it up and you will be finding bugs 10 times faster than your teammates who don’t have it set up.
Many developers do not know how to set this up. This is a must when running test-cases, but JVM also allows remote debugging by opening up a port your IDE can connect to. Learn how to set it up and you will be finding bugs 10 times faster than your teammates who don’t have it set up.
17. Know your IDE
Whether its Eclipse or IntelliJ, shame on you if you can’t set up a new or existing project in your IDE. The ideas IDE setup will have static code analyser, run and debug test environment, can connect to debug a running JVM with has libraries source code also downloaded. A good workman knows their tools.
Whether its Eclipse or IntelliJ, shame on you if you can’t set up a new or existing project in your IDE. The ideas IDE setup will have static code analyser, run and debug test environment, can connect to debug a running JVM with has libraries source code also downloaded. A good workman knows their tools.
18. Learn to Refactor SensiblyMost code is not perfect. Learn to improve some of it as you go, but not all of it in one go. Unlike the others, this one will take time and experience to master.
Start today.
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I am Dhananjaya Naidu and I’m just like you; a java lover. I feel proud to say that I am a Java Developer and currently located in Bangalore, India. I enjoy coding in full Java/J2ee stack (Spring, JSF, Hibernate, Struts, Servlets, JSP) and Web Technologies.
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