Effective Kotlin

With the third edition of Joshua Bloch’s well-respected book, Effective Java, now available I thought it interesting to take a look and see how it applies in a Kotlin world.

Each week I will try to add a new article referencing one more “items” from the book. I will cover each item only at a high level as this is not a replacement for Joshua’s reasonings and details.

Creating and Destroying Objects

• Item 1: Consider static factory methods instead of constructors
• Item 2: Consider a builder when faced with many constructor parameters
• Item 3: Enforce the singleton property with a private constructor or an enum type
• Item 4: Enforce noninstantiability with a private constructor
• Item 5: Prefer dependency injection to hardwiring resources
• Item 6: Avoid creating unnecessary objects
• Item 7: Eliminate obsolete object references
• Item 8: Avoid finalizers and cleaners
• Item 9: Prefer try-with-resources to try-finally

Methods Common to All Objects

• Item 10: Obey the general contract when overriding equals
• Item 11: Always override hashCode when you override equals
• Item 12: Always override toString
• Item 13: Override clone judiciously
• Item 14: Consider implementing Comparable

Classes and Interfaces

• Item 15: Minimize the accessibility of classes and members
• Item 16: In public classes, use accessor methods, not public fields
• Item 17: Minimize mutability
• Item 18: Favor composition over inheritance
• Item 19: Design and document for inheritance or else prohibit it
• Item 20: Prefer interfaces to abstract classes
• Item 21: Design interfaces for posterity
• Item 22: Use interfaces only to define types
• Item 23: Prefer class hierarchies to tagged classes
• Item 24: Favor static member classes over nonstatic
• Item 25: Limit source files to a single top-level class

Generics

• Item 26: Don’t use raw types
• Item 27: Eliminate unchecked warnings
• Item 28: Prefer lists to arrays
• Item 29: Favor generic types
• Item 30: Favor generic methods

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