How did Java programmers survive before annotations?

Question

Before the introduction of annotations in Java, how was the same functionality achieved?

Such a huge portion of what I do every day in Java involves annotations that I can't imagine what it would be like to program without them.

What would be an alternative way of achieving the same functionality without annotations?

Answer 1

Alex, I would take XML for $400.

Answer 2

By writing a lot of xml configuration files.

Answer 3

I don't know what you mean; I don't use annotations, but here I am still alive as ever.

Answer 4

They where two techniques:

• One was to use XML configuration files, related to your Java classes (an example is JPA XML configuration files).
• In some cases, where your just needed a marker on a class, marker interfaces where used. Is consists in having an interface with no methods, and you can check at runtime if a given object implements this interface. One pretty common sample is Serializable.

Answer 5

Other ways (beside XML config files--which probably also includes use of Spring) would be lots of properties files.

Answer 6

• XDoclet - basically a code generator that takes information from the Java source code and custom javadoc tags.
• Marker interfaces like Serializable
• Naming conventions (test methods in JUnit)
• And yes, lots of XML config files. Be very glad you haven't had to live with those.

Answer 7

They are very nice features but they are creating more confusion for me as I used to define them in comments e.g. @author, @return, and @deprecated etc. I skip most of the comments and therefore, It creates more confusion rather than a convenience for me.

Answer 8

• Properties file.
• XML configurations
• Text-based custom files.
• Interface class file with many constant fields....