-1 on wildcard imports

Over at Planet Apache I saw Justin Erenkrantz ask about the current recommended practice on doing .* imports in Java.

My first reaction was a slight: "Uh, who's still bothering with all these IDE's that CTRL-O/organize imports for you?" IMHO: There has only ever been one pro for using wildcard imports IMHO: and that is (on short term only) reduced typing and code management involved when doing the .* trick. This advantage (still IMHO) has gone with the new wind of the refactoring IDE's .

The oldest contra-indication I catched (well ahead of these IDE's) was about clarity in debugging/reading your code. If there is 3 .* imports on top and you see there is a problem surrounding some class of type Whatever, then you'ld actually need to get into all of those 3 packages to go and search for the actual class/file to continue your interesting read... Again, with nowadays IDE's that file is just a ctrl-click away. The odd hardcode vi user (perhaps you in remote connection hacking mode) might still be gratefull for the time saver in finding full qualified imports that hint him directly to the exact file locations.

In any case the true reason not to use them any more is compilation speed: 'Not having to look around in 'possible' locations for the dependencies of the files' is an equally appreciated time saver for the compiler. A very torough explanation of this can be found in the most complete (albeit most dull) book I've ever read about Java: Java Rules.

*Update* Uh, I should 've known! When you think there is no reason to discuss, someone will stand up and make some random noise Pun (but no offense) intended on the well chosen blog name. So let's have one more round of counter-arguments:

• Code get's read (at least) 100 times more then it gets written. (Forgot where I catched this quote) So the bit of time *you* win in typing is asking for a tough pay-back on wasted time on reading/interpretation. Please abondon the idea that you are doing someone a favor.
• When working in teams, you don't want to be CTRL-O'ing in different styles to limit the amount of noise on cvs-diff lists.

In any case, we already agree on the fact that it's the IDE making the real type-speed difference, and why wouldn't you then configure it so that it also optimises reading speed (where the benefit is 100-fold, remember). And just to show I'm not a hard-liner on this: just make sure you and your team can agree on an optimal modus vivendi, in my book that could be agreeing on 'some' allowed * imports (like java.util and java.awt) where the clarity is often bought by the fact that these classes are known enough.

# Posted by mpo at 10:17 PM | TrackBack