Never use local variables. Whenever you feel the temptation to use one, make it into an instance or static variable instead to unselfishly share it with all the other methods of the class. This will save you work later when other methods need similar declarations. C++ programmers can go a step further by making all variables global.

If you have to define a structure to hold data for callbacks, always call the structure`PRIVDATA`. Every module can define its own`PRIVDATA`. In VC++, this has the advantage of confusing the debugger so that if you have a`PRIVDATA` variable and try to expand it in the watch window, it doesn't know which`PRIVDATA` you mean, so it just picks one.

These usually have the form keyword=value. The values are loaded into Java variables at load time. The most obvious obfuscation technique is to use slightly different names for the keywords and the Java variables. Use configuration files even for constants that never change at run time. Parameter file variables require at least five times as much code to maintain as a simple variable would.