Re: Java Developer Jobs

On Wed, 12 Dec 2007 02:55:18 -0000, ryanthames@xxxxxxxxx <ryanthames@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hi, I'm an undergraduate student. I'm assuming most of the frequent
posters here are Java Developers professionally. I was wondering if
you guys had any advice on how to prepare for a job doing Java
development. I'm currently a senior at the college I attend, but as
you may know, the gap between school and the actual industry is quite
large. Java is something I'm very passionate about, and any help I
could get would be great. I appreciate your time.

I did a Computer Science degree and I felt that I learned so much more about the practical craft of software development in the first 6 months of work after graduating than I did in the years at university. At university you don't get to do software development all day every day. At work you do, and you quickly get better at it, especially if you are lucky enough that one or two members of your team really are top notch at what they do and you can learn from them.

The number one way to get better is to practice. You can do this by writing programs that interest you. By making mistakes, causing yourself problems and using books, websites and newsgroups for solutions, you will develop better approaches to programming that will help you to avoid the same problems in future. Steve McConnell's book "Code Complete", while not Java-specific, will get you thinking about a lot of these practices.

Possibly the big difference between coding for university assignments and coding in the real world is that, in the real world, you will usually be working in a team. This means communication and coordination are so much more important. Your code has to play nicely with other people's. You'll be using things like version control, issue tracking and continuous integration that probably weren't even discussed on your course. The book "The Pragmatic Programmer" by Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas covers these real world concerns and contains a lot of common sense.

If you're already a competent Java programmer, then read Joshua Bloch's "Effective Java". Yes it's out-of-date, but it's still the best book there is to make yourself a better Java programmer. It was a revelation to me when I first read it. You may also consider studying for the Sun Certified Java Programmer qualification. It's by no means essential, but you'll learn something doing it and, for a vendor certification, it is reasonably well respected by employers.

People will tell you things like "you must learn JSF" or "you need to know EJB to get a job". I say the Java universe is huge and you've got no chance of learning everything or even close to half of it. Pick the technologies and frameworks that look interesting to you. There's no point learning something just to get a job if you're not going to enjoy that job.

Dan.

--
Daniel Dyer
http://www.uncommons.org
.

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