Effective Java 3/E summary chanpter 7 (Shorter version)

21 Mar 2021

Chanpter 7 : Method

You can find the longer version of this summary here.

Parameters

• Consider protective copied instance to prevent an attack
• Validation early + Documentation
  • Null check
  • Range check
  • Type check
• Minimize parameters
  • Highly orthogonal
  • Use static member class
  • Use static member class + Builder pattern
• Interface is better than Class
• Enum is better than boolean
• Avoid overloading when same size of paramters
• When using varargs, define required params separately

    static int min(int firstArg, int... remainingArgs) { ... }
  

Return

• Do not return null
• Return Collections.empty*() replacing null
• Return Optional<T> when
  • avoiding return null
  • clients need to deal with return value specially

Comments for all exposed API

• Write WHAT, not HOW
• Write @params, @return, @throws, postcondition, side effect, thread safety level