A logical follow up to null checking in the extreme and Never return Null Arrays, is what we should be doing when a null does get returned. The problem Consider the following method: This time, a null check is appropriate because we can’t guarantee createBuilder() works as advertised.  Let’s assume that the method is either [...]

Continuing on Jeanne’s theme of nulls, its a pet peeve of mine when I come across code that returns null arrays instead of empty arrays. The purpose of this post is to discuss some of the reasons why its a good practice to return empty arrays over null arrays, including Collection objects or typed array. [...]

In Java, we’re told to check for nulls to avoid unexpected null pointer exceptions.  This can be taken too far though.  Consider the following code: When did builder have the opportunity to become null? By definition, a constructor creates an object. We just called the constructor. We know builder isn’t null. Having extra code around [...]