We are all used to seeing the traditional UML class diagram, and while quite boring aesthetically, it still serves its purpose (if you can keep it updated). But, for some fun and an interestingly new visual perspective, try the Relief 3d model view of your application. It only takes a few minutes to setup.

All you need is a JRE version 1.5 and up, the Java3d library, the Relief jar, and the project description.

The project description takes the most amount of time because you must list all dependencies of your project. You also have to properly set the jrePath and the basedir path. Once you’ve done this, and saved the project.xml into the Relief directory where you unzipped it, you can start the 3d model viewer with this command:

java -jar relief.jar projects.xml

When the view comes up there are different options. You can zoom in and out, rotate in 3d, double click on a class opening a new window to isolate it.

Here is the first of four videos produced by Jason Hawkins, using the style of the famous Mac vs PC ads to humorously, and dare I say, oh so accurately, compare Rails to Java.

Note: Ok, its not completely accurate. If it were, there would be another tray full of jars stacked on top of the existing one, supported by the first layers of jars, such that if one were removed the entire stack would collapse.

While comments are certainly an important part of code documentation, and become much appreciated later on during maintenance and support phases of an application, they can be quite tedious to write, particularly in cases where you are documenting the obvious. In some situations you may be able to get away without writing comments for these types of methods, but in some situations your IDE or Javadoc report may still flag those methods as missing Javadoc comments and so it’s best to put them in anyway.

JAutodoc is a super Eclipse plugin for assisting you with writing comments. It comes with customizable method prefix mappings to comment phrases. For example, if your method begins with ‘add’ the phrase ‘Adds the’ will be placed in the comment. Thus, if the method name was ‘addEmployee’ the comment text would be ‘Adds the employee’. If the method were ‘isActive’, the method text becomes ‘Checks if is active’. All of the mappings are customizable from the plugin properties.

It can be set to use the Eclipse comment formatter, to replace the existing Javadoc or to complete it, as well as optionally add a todo annonation to it for future review. It fills out all the parameters passed and return parameters as well.

You can highlight an individual method and right click and choose JAutodoc from the menu, or select the entire source of the class and complete all the javadocs. It saves a lot of time getting the skeleton of your javadoc comments in place, allowing you to focus your commenting time and energy on writing meaningful descriptions where necessary.

To read more about the plugin and download it, see the JAutodoc web site.