Consider the following code snippet:

public class SomeClass {

 @SuppressWarnings("unused")

 private Validator validator;

 ... 

}

Variable validator really isn't use. It could be simply removed, by author decided to mark it as @SuppressWarnings("unused") - just in order to make compiler and Eclipse silent. 

Stupid!

Collection setter

There is two major ways to write setters for collection-type members.
This example combines both of them.

public void setPhones(List<PhoneNumber> phones) throws Exception
{
    this.phones = phones;
    this.phones.clear();
    this.phones.addAll(phones);
}

Compare float numbers

This is how Chuck Norris compares float numbers:

if (!Float.valueOf("0.0").equals(price.getActualPrice()))
{
 return true;
}

As to me, this is a really unobvious way to parse strings:

protected void parseSummaryLines()
{
    ...

    // NOTE: First letters are ommited in order to 
    // support capitalized words as well
    String RESULT_GOOD_TEXT_1 = "othing";    // Nothing
    String RESULT_GOOD_TEXT_2 = "uccessful"; // Successful
    String RESULT_BAD_TEXT_1 = "assword";    // Password
    String RESULT_BAD_TEXT_2 = "failed";     // Failed

    ...
}

Next generation programming style

A very good article about programming:
http://codemonkeyism.com/generation-java-programming-style/

in particular, this one is great:
http://codemonkeyism.com/never-never-never-use-string-in-java-or-at-least-less-often/

Bad books samples

Today I read a blog entry How Programming Books Promote Code Smells.

This is true: many books contain examples of bad code.

One of my favorite examples is the main method with try/catch like this one.

public static void main(String args[]) {
  try{
    FileInputStream fstream = ...
  }catch (Exception e){//Catch exception if any
    System.err.println("Error: " + e.getMessage());
  }
}

This try/catch is absolutely NOT NEEDED! If you skip them, the JVM does exactly the same work. the well-known "Throw early catch late" principle says that you shoudn't catch exception until you know what to do with it (except the trivial actions that the system does by default).