Java developers are unlikely to ever suffer from a lack of libraries, utilities, and programs at their disposal. There's no shortage of tools that offer niche as well as fundamental features. However, some tools undoubtedly stand out due to their popularity, usefulness, data representation, and in-tool features. These 8 tools listed below are often listed as some of the best Java development tools available on the market.

A memory leak is a situation where unused objects occupy unnecessary space in memory. Unused objects are typically removed by the Java Garbage Collector (GC) but in cases where objects are still being referenced, they are not eligible to be removed. As a result, these unused objects are unnecessarily maintained in memory. Memory leaks block access to resources and cause an application to consume more memory over time, leading to degrading system performance.

Debugging is the process of identifying and fixing any issues in the source code of a program. Modern IDEs like Eclipse provide debugging tools that make it easier for developers to walk through their code interactively and inspect it to spot and resolve any issues.

I was introduced to Git and GitHub in May of 2014 – just shy of 10 years since Git was created in 2005. That same day I was also handed a MacBook Pro laptop and an IntelliJ license, the main tools with which I was to begin my new role as a developer in a new position at a new company. It all sounds lovely, right?

Imagine, you are developing Java software and suddenly you encounter an error? Where could you have possibly gone wrong? There are many types of errors that you will encounter while developing Java software, but most are avoidable. Some errors are minor lapses when writing codes but that is very much mendable. If you have an error monitoring tool such as Stackify Retrace, you can write codes with ease.

If you shudder thinking about compilation for different platforms, I know the feeling. One of the Java promises, the WORA (Write Once, Run Anywhere) principle, while revolutionizing platform independence, it stopped short of one more step – to be able to deploy anywhere. Personally, I think that WORADA sounds awesome, but I guess before Docker it didn’t occur to people that eliminating “works on my machine” is as simple as shipping your machine.

Troubleshooting issues in your applications can be a complicated task requiring visibility into various components. In the worst-case scenario, to understand what is happening and why it is happening you will need metrics, logs, and traces combined together. Having that information will give you the possibility to slice and dice the data and get to the root cause efficiently. In this article, we will focus on logs and how to configure logging for your Java applications.

Logging is a crucial part of the observability of your Java applications. Combined with metrics and traces gives full observability into the application behavior and is invaluable when troubleshooting. Logs, combined with metrics shortens the time needed to find the root cause and allows for quick and efficient resolutions of problems.

When it comes to troubleshooting application performance, the more information you have the better. Logs combined with metrics and traces give you full visibility into your Java applications. Logging in your Java applications can be achieved in multiple ways – for example, you can just write data to a file, but there are far better ways on how to do that, as we explained in our Java logging tutorial.

Java Management Extensions, or JMX, was first added to J2EE, and it has been part of J2SE since the 5.0 release. The JMX API aims to provide a standard for monitoring and managing Java-enabled applications and services. In this article, we will explain the JMX architecture and show you how to pull the metrics that it generates into your Sumo Logic account in order to gain unique insights and a more thorough understanding of the health of your application and services.