The Guidelines:

• Guideline: Force a proper initial state.
• Guideline: Keep constructors and initializers focused on initialization.
• Guideline: Invoke the this() constructor with the most parameters.
• Guideline: Make clones of mutable referenced objects in clone().
• Guideline: Watch out for transient variables when deserializing.
• Guideline: Don't depend upon "timely" finalization for program correctness.
• Guideline: Use finalizers knowledgeably.