prime-mvc VS NullAway

Prime MVC is a Model View Controller written in Java and licensed under the Apache License 2.0.

My company's product is primarily written in Java. It's a web based auth system, fwiw.

I don't write too much code nowadays, but read a lot. From what I can see, here's the stack:

* intellij for an ide (with tons of plugins)

* prime MVC (https://github.com/prime-framework/prime-mvc) for the framework

* mybatis for SQL/queries

* java 17

I've also used dropwizard and spring. If it was a greenfield development with emphasis on developer productivity, I'd go with spring any day. Big dev community, tons of doco, a solution for any problem if you can find it.

Fortunately, Uber made tooling for languages with broken type systems

* https://github.com/uber/NullAway

* https://github.com/uber-go/nilaway

Some patterns arise from language design

* You can't express `T` where `null` is forbidden in the type system so you get NullPointerException everywhere and defensive null checks.

* You express a sum type as a product type because your language does not have sum types .

* Your language doesn't have first class multiple return values (or tuples) so you return extra parameters via out parameters or thread local variables such as `errno`.

* Your language doesn't have exceptions (or algebraic effects) and can't do IO so you have monad transformers.

* Your language doesn't have set-theoretic types so you need hacks like `thiserror` .

* Your language doesn't have stackful coroutines or can't infer async IO for you so you have `async/await` spam or callback hell or "mono's".

* Your language doesn't have exhaustive checks (or pattern matching) so you need a fallthrough case check on switch statements .

* Your language doesn't have algebraic effects, so you need to pass context everywhere.

I know someone will reply about Java's null annotation checking options, so here is one of them: https://github.com/uber/NullAway .

If you must use Java, use Uber's Nullaway which gives null safety via Errorprone.

Does anyone have experience using this at Meta who can compare to https://github.com/uber/NullAway ?

A special kind of validation is enforcing that record fields are not null. (Un)fortunately, records do not have any special behavior regarding nullability. You can use tools like NullAway or Error Prone to prevent null in your code in general, or you can add checks to your records:

What do you think of https://github.com/uber/NullAway

Take a look at NullAway, a plugin for Error Prone.

PMD, Spotbugs, Nullaway: Java linting/static analysis (https://pmd.github.io, https://spotbugs.github.io, https://github.com/uber/NullAway)