How did Java programmers survive before annotations? [closed]

Question

Before the introduction of annotations in Java, how was the same functionality achieved?

Such a huge portion of what I do every day in Java involves annotations that I can't imagine what it would be like to program without them.

What would be an alternative way of achieving the same functionality without annotations?

Answer 1

Alex, I would take XML for $400.

Answer 2

They where two techniques:

• One was to use XML configuration files, related to your Java classes (an example is JPA XML configuration files).
• In some cases, where your just needed a marker on a class, marker interfaces where used. Is consists in having an interface with no methods, and you can check at runtime if a given object implements this interface. One pretty common sample is Serializable.