I\'m looking to make my code more readable as well as use tooling like IDE code inspection and/or static code analysis (FindBugs and Sonar) to avoid NullPointerExceptions.
One of the nice things about IntelliJ is that you don't need to use their annotations. You can write your own, or you can use those of whatever other tool you like. You're not even limited to a single type. If you're using two libraries that use different @NotNull annotations, you can tell IntelliJ to use both of them. To do this, go to "Configure Inspections", click on the "Constant Conditions & Exceptions" inspection, and hit the "Configure inspections" button. I use the Nullness Checker wherever I can, so I set up IntelliJ to use those annotations, but you can make it work with whatever other tool you want. (I have no opinion on the other tools because I've been using IntelliJ's inspections for years, and I love them.)