Look Who it Was Random video

On @annotations liberate yourselves from demons by Jarek Ratajski

1,592 views · Published 2 August 2017 · 51:11 · Indexed 22 October 2026

Channel: Devoxx · 2017 · Science & Technology

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Symptoms: - tedious code containing only getters and setter, - useless tests that only test mocks and NOT the business of the system, - frustration – you read a lot of books about JEE, Spring, JPA, spend your time on stack overflow findiong out that you always make things wrong, - fear of refactoring - yes, you have tests – but small change somewhere and suddenly injections do not work anymore, - You constantly need a real sorcerer and his XML spells in order to keep system running.

Is that is what you do for living?

Last but not least - you are so jealous hearing that some other teams write great things in Scala, Python or even JavaScript in a few weeks.

I know the problem. It is not Java that is bad ! The cancer is called @Annotations. Something that was introduced to liberate Java developers from XML programming hell. But after few years it became even a bigger mess. Really - @annotations are the Java GOTO.

After 16 years of programming with Java EE (and Spring, CDI, OSGi) I am sure that almost (there are few good exceptions) every annotation that you put in code is just a code smell and the proof you just do not know Java possibilities. Container based platform.

Jarek Ratajski - Java Developer since 1999

I love programming since my first line of code I did on the C64 in Basic. Somewhere in 90ties I've switched from C++ to java and spent then 16 Years developing JavaEE software working for various companies and projects.  Now I work for CSS Versicherung in Luzern being Java developer during the days and Scala/ScalaJS hacker at nights.

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