97 Things Every Java Programmer Should Know

Chapter 68. Really Looking Under the Hood

Rafael Benevides

Java is a complete platform and should be treated that way. In my Java development career, I’ve met hundreds of developers who are deeply familiar with the language’s syntax. They understand lambdas and streams and know every API from String to nio off the top of their heads. But understanding the following would make them more complete professionals:

Garbage collection algorithms

The JVM GC has improved a lot since its first versions. The JVM’s ergonomics allow it to automatically adjust to have optimal parameters for the detected environment. A good understanding of what is going on can sometimes improve the JVM performance further.

JVM profilers

JVM tuning is not a guessing game. You should understand how the application is behaving before you make any changes. Knowing how to connect and interpret the profiler’s data will help you tune the JVM for better performance, find memory leaks, or understand why a method is taking so long to execute.

Cloud-native applications make it clear that code can be executed on multiple machines across a network over different operating systems. Knowing the following can help Java pros develop a resilient and portable application:

Character encoding

Different OSs can work with different character encodings. Understanding what they are and how to set them up can prevent your application ...