Tag Archives: quality

The Curse of Convenience Methods

Posted on February 5, 2017 by Matthias

In the old days, many Java APIs were fairly low level and pretty generic. You often had to explicitly select a concrete implementation, provide lots of parameters, and generally needed to know how things worked. This has changed in recent years – modern … Continue reading →

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Visualizing Package Dependencies

Posted on August 26, 2012 by Matthias

Managing module or package dependencies is an important design activity that helps to keep a software project maintainable. Visualizing these dependencies is a good way of getting a first impression on a project and for exposing design problems. In this … Continue reading →

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JUnit: Using External Resources

Posted on February 6, 2011 by Matthias

Many integration test cases need access to external resources like files or databases. Dealing with external resources is always messy because you have to set up state and tear it down later. Since JUnit 4.7, there’s a mechanism that makes … Continue reading →

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A Case for Guard Clauses

Posted on June 12, 2009 by Matthias

One of my pet peeves in programming is that few people use guard clauses. A guard clause is an almost trivial concept that greatly improves readability. Inside a method, handle your special cases right away and return immediately.

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New Project: JSysTest

Posted on May 23, 2009 by Matthias

I love unit tests and use them whenever possible. But in the end, there’s no substitute for a full scale system test. Only after system testing, you can be sure that everything works as intended. When I was looking for … Continue reading →

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Development Done Right

Posted on March 1, 2009 by Matthias

In my projects, I’ve always been the one who took care of infrastructure, standardization and quality assurance from the development perspective. The funny thing is that I’m no admin and no QA guy, so most of it wasn’t even my … Continue reading →

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(No) Comment?!

Posted on August 20, 2007 by Matthias

Many software developers feel bad because they make little use of comments in their code. Often, using lengthy comments is considered good style. In the old days, with languages like C or assembler, things got messy pretty fast, so comments … Continue reading →

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Good API Design

Posted on May 1, 2007 by Matthias

Recently I discovered an interesting video for all of us aspiring software architects on Google Video. As part of the “Google Tech Talks” series, Joshua Bloch talks about “How to Design a Good API and Why it Matters”. Being one … Continue reading →

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