Using annotations for validation

There is one common case I often come across and that’s validation of parameters. There are different situations in which you like to validate parameters, the most common case is validation of method parameters, usually performed with guard-clauses and assertions. This is not what I’d like to write about in this blog. I may come across this later. This time it’s all about annotation driven validation on fields.

Dealing with immutability and long constructors in a fluent way.

I use to state that the best thing to do is to keep your code simple and clean. But if your task is to design an easy-to-understand and easy-to-change API, this may be a bad advice. There simply is no silver bullet in programming and simplicity ain’t one either.

There is a common case you may have encountered more than once, which is long constructors with repeating types. You’re likely to see them in immutable classes. I’m not going to discuss why immutable classes are desirable, I’m going to talk about easing the pain to construct them.