Java is often criticized for being unnecessarily verbose when compared with other languages. Lombok provides a bunch of annotations that generate boilerplate code in the background, removing it from your classes, and, therefore, helping to keep your code clean. Less boilerplate means more concise code that’s easier to read and maintain. In this post, I’ll cover the Lombok features I use more regularly and show you how they can be used to produce cleaner, more concise code.
Local Variable Type Inference: val and var
Lots of languages infer the local variable type by looking at the expression on the right-hand side of the equals. Although this is now supported in Java 10+, it wasn’t previously possible without the help of Lombok. The snippet below shows how you have to explicitly specify the local type: