Development tips

I've worked in some projects so far and I learned some things that can save you a lot of time even if they sound very expensive. These tips are meant for small/medium size projects, perhaps you can apply them to big projects, but I'm not sure.

1. Revision control system from the beginning.
2. Define your goals and milestones, even without dates.
3. Define what you are going to build, with use cases or user stories, or just use whatever you feel comfortable with.
4. Define an architecture, don't go on without this. The architecture must define the form of the system, not the details.
5. Define the contexts you are going to be working on, this means that you have to separate your project into smaller micro-projects (if it applies).
6. Define your frameworks/libraries stack.
7. Define your project(s) structure, this involves folders and files.
8. Define your automated build scripts, something like Gradle would do it.
9. Think in the tests before the implementation, if it's testable, it's implementable.
10. Use continuous integration from the beginning.
11. Keep you source files small and readable.
12. Periodically check your system and update the architecture if some changes have been made.

I omitted several things, but I consider these the most important from a developer's perspective.

I didn't have this information at the beginning because I was too lazy to read about it, and had to learn it the hard way, by suffering the consequences...

Ant and Maven, a brief comparison

I've been working for the last three years and during this period of time the projects I've been involved with have the same discussion:

which build tool should I use?...and the most common answers were...Ant and Maven

You can check some statistics to see which one is going to rule the market, honestly I think Ant will never leave.

But I must say that there's a very important difference between Ant and Maven, Ant is task-oriented with the possibility of handling project-related configurations. And Maven is project-oriented with the possibility of handling task-related configurations.

Considering that, I have these questions that might help you to decide between the right tool:

Maven

1. Do you need to keep standard project structures?
2. Do you want to avoid manual tasks/steps?
3. Do your projects have dependencies to another projects/libraries/frameworks?
4. Do you have a fairly good Internet connection?
5. Do you like to follow the Convention over configuration way?

Ant

1. Do your projects are very different one from another?
2. Do your projects have very different structures?
3. Do you customize your projects so they behave in a very specific way?
4. Do you already have a tight workspace structure that doesn't fit in the Maven world?
5. Do you need to have full control over what your projects do?

Some of these questions might be incorrect, but those are the ones coming to my head right now, so feel free to use them or not.