Kris Kemper

If you work in Java, and you don’t use a decompiler, you haven’t lived.

Well, maybe that’s a bit excessive. Still, I’m shocked by the number of developers that don’t use a decompiler like Jad combined with their IDE, like with Jadclipse and Eclipse.

In eclipse, you can download the Java api source code and attach it that so you can always look at the actual code - original comments and all.

However, you want to be able to look at the source code for any jars that your application depends on as well. I didn’t even realize how useful and freeing it is to be able to do that until I started. I would say that less than 30% of all developers that I’ve met use a decompiler, but it’s definitely one of the top plugins you have to have.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 13th, 2008 at 7:12 pm and is filed under General Agile. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.