Good programming is difficult. It is especially arduous for new programmers given the pace of change and the ever-expanding size of the software engineering body of knowledge (www.swebok.org) that they must master. The authors of this book have found that experience and in-depth understanding are key factors in both programmer productivity and reliable software. The bottom line is that experienced programmers don’t stumble around in the dark. They know the lay of the land, they recognize patterns, and they avoid the hazardous areas.

This book presents our experience and guidance on 50 discrete topics to assist you in avoiding some of those hazards The formal definition, given in the first Java Pitfalls (Wiley, 2000) book, is as follows: “A pitfall is code that compiles fine but when executed produces unintended and sometimes disastrous results.”

This rather terse definition covers what we consider the “basic” pitfall. There are many variations on this theme. A broader definition could be any language feature, API, or system that causes a programmer to waste inordinate amounts of time struggling with the development tools instead of making progress on the resulting software. The causes of pitfalls can be loosely divided into two groups: the fault of the platform designer or the fault of the inexperienced programmer. This is not to cast blame, but rather to determine the source of the pitfall in the construction of a pitfall taxonomy. For the same reason we create a formal definition of pitfalls, we present the pitfall taxonomy in Figure i.1 in order to attempt to better understand the things that trip us up.