8 posts tagged with "best-practices"

I changed my dev server port from 5173 to 5174 across three files, but I also had other unrelated changes in those same files! 😰 I only wanted to commit the port changes. My mentor walked me through Git's partial staging features: git add -p, git stash, interactive staging, and patch mode. After some trial and error (and learning what NOT to do), I successfully committed only the port changes while keeping my other work-in-progress safe. This is professional Git workflow! 🎯

I used to think Java Streams were confusing magic. I avoided them for months, writing nested for loops like it was 2005. Then I saw a senior developer calculate cart totals in ONE line of code that took me 15 lines. I felt like a caveman discovering fire. 🔥 Let me teach you the 5 patterns that cover 90% of real-world Stream usage—no PhD required.

Ever wondered why sometimes your Spring Boot exceptions are caught by @RestControllerAdvice and other times they're not? Or why your custom AccessDeniedHandler returns 403 before your controller even executes? I spent hours debugging this mystery until I understood Spring Boot's two-tier exception handling architecture. Let me save you the confusion. 🎯

I'll never forget the day I accidentally exposed user passwords in my API responses. I returned the entire User entity from a GET endpoint, thinking "Spring Boot will handle it!" Spoiler alert: It returned EVERYTHING—including hashed passwords, internal IDs, and timestamps. My code reviewer nearly had a heart attack. 😱 That's when I learned about DTOs. Let me save you from this nightmare.

If fields are private but setters are public, isn't that the same as making the field public? And what's the difference between Long and long anyway? Let's clear up these common Java confusions.

Ever wished you could go back to your first commit, add that test class you forgot, and have it magically appear in all subsequent commits? With Git's interactive rebase, you can! Let's explore how Git actually stores history and how to safely rewrite it.

Can you compile Java code without a package declaration? Yes. Should you? Absolutely not. Here's why the package statement is essential, not optional.

Have you ever wondered why you can declare variables with the same name in different parts of your code, but not in others? This article explores Java's variable scoping rules, the concept of shadowing, and the design decisions that make Java a safer language.