Coding is the most important task for any developer and mistakes or errors in the coding process can cost a lot. An application with errors or mistakes can never work effectively. Just like other developers, Java developers also need to follow some practices to ensure the quality of the code.
Java is a powerful programming language and it offers different valuable features. It is widely used in different industries. To ensure productivity and performance, when businesses hire dedicated Java developers, they need to ensure there are proper code documentation practices in place.
Best Practices for Java Code Documentation
Clean coding practices are crucial for building easy-to-read and easy-to-maintain code. Using the best practices in Java code documentation ensures a high-quality and effective codebase. A clean code is not just about using proper rules, this is an important element leading to better software development.
1.Proper Project Structure
The first step for Java clean coding is creating a proper project structure. At this step, developers separate and divide the whole code into related files and groups. This division or arrangement helps developers to prevent writing the same code and functions again. They can also easily identify the file objectives with this.
2.Accurately Naming Conventions
When you name the classes and interfaces and decide how to keep the names of the methods, variables, and constants, this process is known as naming conventions. Here are some of the best ways your whole team can follow for properly naming conventions:
-
Pronunciation
Make sure to name the conventions that are easy to pronounce by the developers in a natural way, just like any other language.
-
Self-Explanatory
Name the conventions in such a way that the name itself explains the intention. In this way, it will be easy for the whole Java development team to understand the variable. The ideal name is one that is self-explanatory and there won’t be any need to describe or comment on it for others to understand.
-
Meaningful Distinctions
The names should be unique and also have a specific meaning. For instance, the names such as p, q, r, s, or t are not meaningful.
Apart from these, there are also some other general rules that developers need to follow while naming conventions:
- When you name an interface or a class, it means it is a noun and a noun should start with an uppercase letter. For example, Painter, Student, Car, etc.
- When the numeric value is lengthy in Java code, you need to use an underscore. For example, the new way of writing lengthy numbers is 58_356_823. Earlier these same lengthy numbers were written as 58356823.
- The methods of Java code should have proper names starting with lowercase and these methods are verbs. For example, methods like start, stop, apply, etc.
- The names of the constants will be uppercase. For example, MAX_SIZE, MIN_WIDTH, etc.
-
Prevent Creating Unnecessary Objects
It is another ideal practice for creating clean Java code. When you prevent creating unnecessary objects, it is also one of the best memory-consuming Java operations. It means that the developers need to create only the objects that are needed for the project.
-
Create An Accurate Source File Structure
A source file holds data about different elements. When developers follow a particular order in a source file, it makes the code more readable and easy to understand. There are different style guides for the developers to follow. The element ordering style that developers can follow is:
- Package statement
- Import statements
- Static and non-static imports
- One top-level class
- Constructors
- Class variables
- Instance variables
- Methods
5. Properly Comment on the Code
When you comment on a written code, it helps other team members to understand the minor details when they are going through the code. Comments must be added carefully and there should be a proper description of to-the-point things. If comments are not written carefully, they can confuse the developers.
6. Prevent Too Many Parameters
While coding in Java, developers must optimize the number of parameters in a method. When there are too many parameters in the method of a program, it makes interpreting the code difficult.
7. Write Code Accurately
When a developer is writing code for any type of app in Java, it is a compulsion that the code is easy to understand and read. The main reason for this practice is that when it comes to Java there is no single agreement for coding.
Thus, it is important to use a famous code process or a private convention. Here are the reasons why an indentation criterion is important:
- The expressions should be broken down with commas
- All the Java developers need to use four spaces for a unit of indentation
- There must be a criterion for the line length and also this criterion must not be more than 80 owing
Conclusion
Code documentation is a fun process. If there are best practices for clean code, it doesn’t mean that you can’t do coding other than these practices. The coding processes entirely depend on the requirements of the project and these mentioned above can help you get a clean code that is easy to read.
