9 Tips to Create Maintainable Java Applications Which are Easier to Support

An application spent 80% of his time on maintenance, creating application which cis not just maintainable but easier to support pay in long run.

Hello guys, if you are in software development then you know that creating an application is easy but creating a maintainable application that can pass the test of time in production is rather difficult.

It’s also one of the main reason experienced Software developers are paid higher salaries compared to many other jobs.

In last few posts, I talked about Software Design Best Practices and Microservices Patterns and In this article, I am going to share with you some tips on creating maintainable Java applications which are also easier to support.  

One aspect of development, which is often overlooked by developers is to create applications that are both easy to maintain and support.

Since any software spend 90% of its lifetime in maintenance mode, it's very important that your application is easy to configure, support, and maintain. 

Also, Java applications are no different than any other software, you must pay attention to these key properties of writing production-quality code, hence this tips also applies to any programming language which is used to create real-world software which is used by real users.

If you have worked in large organizations e.g. Investment banks like JP Morgan, Citi, Barclays, Citibank, or big Insurance companies you will find how important is support and maintenance of production applications are. 

There are several more software engineers working in support roles than programmers developing software.

You have L1, L2, and L3 support and then a dedicated Production support team for every application. This means support is really important.

But, when programmers develop an application, they focus on features, performance, and speed of development like how quickly a feature is ready for testing, etc, and to achieve these many programmers including myself in past often ignore things that matter a lot in production.

9 Tips to Create Java Applications Which are Easier to Maintain and Support

Here are some practical tips to make your Java application more maintainable.