90% of Java Developers Have Never Used This Hidden Feature. Do You? We’ve all been taught that goto is evil and doesn’t exist in Java. But what if I told you there is a "legal" way to jump across loops? Meet Labels. It’s one of the most underutilized features in the JVM ecosystem. While it’s been there since day one, most senior devs haven't touched it in years. The Magic Trick: When dealing with deeply nested loops, we often resort to messy boolean flags just to break out of the top-level loop. It’s boilerplate. It’s ugly. With Labels, you can simply name your loop and target it directly: search: for (var row : matrix) { for (var cell : row) { if (cell == target) break search; } } The Controversy: Is it a "clean code" lifesaver or a "spaghetti code" nightmare? Many architects argue that if you need a Label, your method is probably too complex and needs refactoring. Others love it for its raw efficiency in algorithmic tasks. Where do you stand? 1 Essential tool for complex logic. 2 Legacy "code smell" that should be banned. Let’s settle this in the comments! #Java #Coding #SoftwareEngineering #JVM #DeveloperLife #TechTrends
Interesting feature, knew it before, but it's looks not very clear so I never met in in production code)
not sure that's the best example, I think extracting and encapsulating a deep nested loop plus: if ( cell == target ) return cell; OR return true; //depending on the needs would be better, or it simply is how I've been thought or learned myself to see it as better but again, I'm not sure this example is he best, maybe it could be better used on a deep complex mutiple nested loops and in that case I think that maybe, the problem is a bad design and adding labels is just a bad patch to make it work
Yes we always learn goto: is evil while I have friends which wrote kernels and they always used goto: Things always change. We always have mandate to have Java docs and we saw if someone change the code and forgot to update Java Doc then it may be nightmare in maintenance. Now no one wants to maintain code so now instead of Java Doc we come up with good method names and possibly simplify logic. Further in AI, AI will write code and struggle to change. May be now instead of Java docs in code AI will create documentation from code. Things are always changing. Yesterday’s evil might be today’s darling and tomorrow we will throw that away.
of you have to explain or document code thats already a big sign of bad code. in most cases time and space complexoty are enough to optimize for, higher needs only emerge in scenarios where I would argue whether java is even the right technology for the task.
"Hidden feature" - is a bit of an overstatement 😁 Labels have been around for decades, and the fact that they’re rarely used is more a sign of how practices have evolved, not that they’re "underrated." If your code requires a label, it’s usually a signal that it’s time to refactor.
There is a F-ing reason to NOT use it. So don't.
java devs meeting with gotos while everyone is trying to ditch them
Andrey Borisov In a production environment, this is rarely appreciated. If you need labels to manage nested loops, it's usually a sign the method should be refactored. Extracting the inner logic into a separate method with a simple return is much cleaner and easier to test.
Idk, why so many angry devs here )) You can rewrite this with while loop. I know about this feature, imho this us for algoritm tasks such as leetcode, not foe enterprise.
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