Coding Standards
Setters/Getters vs. Constructors
For Spring Managed Classes: All required properties should be set via Constructor. All optional properties should be set via setters/getters. This makes it easy to distinguish between required and optional properties.
For Non-Spring Managed Classes: These should have the option of setting all properties via constructor, as they may be instantiated inline as instance variables.
Readability
The majority of developers these days have larger, widescreen monitors. To that end, the code should favor longer lines, rather than breaking a line into multiple lines. Thus, method signatures, unless exceptionally long, should appear on one line.
The current recommendation for line length is 140 characters.
Validation
All Spring-managed classes should leverage the JaValid annotations for dependency checking of properties at deployment time.