Tag: java

“Isn’t Java that C# clone?”

It has got to be something along the lines of, “Isn’t Java the same as JavaScript?”.

‘Any chance you can rewrite it in JavaScript?’

never say that “i can’t do it”.

“i never experience null pointer exceptions when i write *my* java”

Why java developers need eye glasses? Because they can’t csharp.

“Why is this program running so slowly?” 😉

“How to handle pointers in Java?”

You can’t possibly know all the Java technologies out there because no company will give you a chance to. One company will swear by the Spring framework while other companies like LinkedIn have moved on and are into the PlayFramework.

However, let me give you a list of 10 technologies that will always pitch you ahead of your competition regardless of the company.

10 Skills that will make you a great Java Developer:

1. At least one MVC Framework like JSF, Playframework, Struts, or Spring MVC
2. Hibernate or JPA for databases
3. Dependency Injection (@Resource)
4. SOAP based Web Services (JAX-WS)
5. Some build tool (Ant, Maven, etc.)
6. JUnit (or other Unit Testing framework)
7. Version Control mostly Git
8. JSTL
9. Application server/container configuration management and application deployment (whether it is WebSphere, Tomcat, JBoss, etc. you need to know where your application runs and how to improve its execution)
10. AJAX

Nonetheless being a smart Java developer takes more that just knowing your stuck.

Success!

1) Learn the language basics

This is the first step for very obvious reason. If you don’t know the basics then you will never know either what to do next or what you are doing wrong. Initially, I do not expect from you to become the master of all java basic stuffs like keywords, core concepts or basic coding techniques. What really I expect from you is just to read all the text available in below links, even if it just doesn’t make sense to you in the first attempt. Just keep reading it.

1. http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tu…
2. https://www.ibm.com/developerwor…

Please keep in mind that above two links are not the only links for basic knowledge. You can do a quick google search and find out many similar links.

When you are done with few links as two given above, re-read them again second time. Don’t skip any part of it. This time, things will start making more sense to you, and you will be able to connect between various concepts by yourself. If you are still not able to connect the pieces of information spread in multiple places, then keep repeating this step until you actually start relating the core concepts. Don’t worry about you are wrong or right, just relate them and better make notes. Notes will help you to measure your java learning curve.

2) Create some small programs

Once you are confident that you are very much familiar with most basic stuffs/keywords and concepts and you can actually relate them somehow, you are welcome to second step where you will have to start building some very very basic java programs e.g. hello world, simple addition and subtraction etc.

When you are writing the programs, keep in mind that first couple of programs are going to be real tough for you. But once you are done with them you will not face similar level of difficulty in next set of programs.

You may face difficulty so much that you may not able to type in your hello world program itself, all by yourself. Don’t hesitate, open google and search similar program. Don’t copy it using CTRL+C. Here just read the program, and type into your IDE (I suggest to use eclipse, as I find it very easy) and solve the compilation error caused by incorrect syntax you got while typing (basically I assume that you will make mistakes in lowercase/uppercase). If you are still not able to do it, then take the help of google again. Google is your friend, just remember it.

Do it for couple of programs and remember that always try to create program by yourself first and then use google. I am giving below a list of basic java programs which you may consider for beginning.

• Display some text message.
• Display a list of numbers (1 to 50) each in new line.
• Find the max and min between two numbers.
• Swapping between two numbers using any technique you know.
• Build a calculator program able to add/substract/multiply and divide the numbers.
• Create two classes (super class/sub class) and practice method overloading and overriding concepts.
• Create some programs involving array e.g. printing output in array format in console.
• And so on…

Above programs are just to give you a start and make you understand what I meant by basic programs. List can be longer and I will suggest you to add more items to this list and create programs for them. And remember, google is your friend 🙂

3) Create advanced programs using java APIs

Now when you are done with making most of the baisc programs, and most importantly, you are comfortable into creating such basic programs, jump to this step. Here, I will suggest you to work hard on learning java APIs inside java collections and java IOs. Just start exploring various classes and interfaces involved into these APIs and start creating programs for them. Please note that you should always try to find an already existing API and method for doing a certain task, and you should not be creating your own logic here. Your goal is to get familiarize yourself with these APIs, so always look for a solution within these APIs only.

Again I am suggesting few basic programs you can work on to start with. Later you can include more APIs and more such programs as much as you can.

• Taking input from console and printing it
• Reading a file from filesystem and printing it’s content in console
• Creating a new file and writing some data onto it
• Reading data from a URL and do some search on it’s content
• Store elements in a list, and then iterate over it
• Use HashMap to store random key-value pairs and iterate over it in multiple ways
• Create some programs for searching and sorting over collection elements
• And so on…

The more and more programs you build at this step, you will get more and more confidence. As soon as you are good in using these APIs, jump to most important and difficult task in next section.

4) Create at least one desktop application and one web application

This step will give you the confidence which is needed to face any java interview and prove your mettle in java related discussions. Idea is simple. You just have to decide at least one java desktop/GUI application (e.g. desktop calculator), and then one web application (e.g. hospital management). And now when you have most basic knowledge at your hand, start exploring everything which you will need to build your two applications.

Ask help from experts (I will also do my bit to help you), your experienced friends, colleagues and every person you know and who can help you. Read all available good material which comes into your way when searching for solutions and simple learning the concepts. Buy some books which are related to the concepts where you are struck in. Do everything what is needed to build these application. Make them you sole objective for few days (or weeks or even months).

Let me assure you that by the time you end up completing both exercises, you will be much more confident than ever before, when it comes to java. And more importantly, it helps you to develop a habit of getting things done at every cost. This attitude is very important in long run of your career.

5) Read and participate in some good java blogs/forums

After your above four steps are completed, you will be more of a confident man who is also able to help others like you have been few month back. Find people who know less and help them in solving the problems, even if it require some amount of time of you as well. A good place for these activities can be forums like Stack Overflow – Where Developers Learn, Share, & Build Careers. When you start learning about mistakes others are making, it just open up your mind on various directions and improves your thought processing capabilities.

In fact, last step is like infinite loop and you should keep doing it when the time permits. You will really appreciate the results when you will realize how mature you have become.

That’s all for now on my thoughts regarding best way to learn java. If you happen to agree with me, drop a comment. If you do not agree with me, drop your suggestion. I will include your thought into main article if it’s really good

If you are a Java developer and passionate about technology, you can follow the points which could make you an outstanding Java developer.

1. Have strong foundation and understanding on OO Principles
For a Java developer, having strong understanding on Object Oriented Programming is a must. Without having a strong foundation on OOPS, one can’t realize the beauty of an Object Oriented Programming language like Java. If you don’t have good idea on what OOPS is, even though you are using OOP language you may be still coding in procedural way. Just studying OO principle definitions won’t help much. We should know how to apply those OO principles in designing a solution in OO way. So one should have a strong knowledge on Object modeling, Inheritance, Polymorphism, Design Patterns.

2. Master the core APIs
It doesn’t matter how strong you are in terms of theoretical knowledge if you don’t know the language constructs and core APIs. In case of Java, one should have very strong hands-on experience with core APIs like java.lang.*, I/O, Exceptions, Collections, Generics, Threads, JDBC etc. When it comes to Web application development, no matter which framework you are using having strong knowledge on Servlets, JSPs is a must.

3. Keep coding
Things look simpler when talking about them theoretically. We can give a solution to a problem very easily in theory. But we can realize the depth of the problem when we start implementing our approach. You will come to know the language limitations, or design best practices while coding. So keep coding.

4. Subscribe to forums 
We are not alone. There are lots of people working on the same technologies that we are working on. While doing a simple proof of concept on a framework may not give you real challenges, when you start using it on real projects you will face weird issues and you won’t find any solution in their official documentation. When starting to work on a new technology the best and first thing to do is subscribe to the relevant technology forums. Whatever the issue you are facing, someone else in the world might have already faced it earlier and might have found the solution. And it would be really really great if you can answer the questions asked by other forum users.

5. Follow blogs and respond
As I already told you are not alone. There are thousands of enthusiastic technology freaks around the world blogging their insights on technology. You can see different perspectives of same technology on blogs. Someone can find great features in a technology and someone else feels its a stupid framework giving his own reasons of why he felt like that. So you can see both good and bad of a technology on blogs. Follow the good blogs and respond/comment on posts with your opinion on that.

6. Read open source frameworks source code
A good developer will learn how to use a framework. But if you want to be an outstanding developer you should study the source code of various successful, popular frameworks where you can see the internal working mechanism of the framework and lot of best practices. It will help a lot in using the frameworks in very effective way.

7. Know the technology trends
In the open source software development technology trends keep on changing. By the time you get good idea on a framework that might become obsolete and some brand new framework came into picture with super-set of features. The problem which you are trying to solve with your current framework may be already solved by the new framework with a single line of configuration. So keep an eye on whats coming in and whats going out.

8. Keep commonly used code snippets/utilities handy
Overtime you may need to write/copy-paste same piece of code/configuration again and again. Keeping those kind of configuration snippets like log4.properties, jdbc configuration etc and utilities like StringUtils, ReflectionUtils, DBUtils will be more helpful. I know it itself won’t make you outstanding developer. But just imagine some co-developer asks you to help in fetching the list of values of a property from a collection of objects and then you just used your ReflectionUtil and gave the solution in few minutes. That will make you outstanding.

9. Know different development methodologies
Be familiar with various kinds of methodologies like Agile, SCRUM, XP, Waterfall etc. Nowadays choosing the development methodology depends on the client. Some clients prefer Agile and some clients are happy with waterfall model. So having an idea on various methodologies would be great.

10. Document/blog your thoughts on technology
In day to day job you may learn new things, new and better way of doing things, best practices, architectural ideas. Keep documenting those thoughts or blog it and share across the community. Imagine you solved a weird problem occurred while doing a simple POC and you blogged about it. May be some developer elsewhere in the world is facing the same issue on a production deployed application. Think how important that solution for that developer. So blog your thoughts, they might be helpful for others or to yourself.

Java and JavaScript might look like one was a direct descendant of the other, but in reality they are far from that.

Java is an object oriented programming language developed by Sun Microsystems that is capable of running on multiple operating systems with the use of an interpreter.

JavaScript, on the other hand, was created by Netscape as a scripting language much like a client side version PHP. It cannot create stand alone applications, but instead resides on an internet browser.

Java uses its own code then executes it on a virtual machine that interprets the Java code into its counterpart native code.

JavaScript is a scripting language, and as such it isn’t compiled. A JavaScript enabled browser takes the script and process it, it would then execute the instructions on the script. The main use of JavaScript is to provide a level of interactivity to web pages that are not achievable with simple HTML.

It can be used along with other technologies like AJAX to give an even more interactive experience. JavaScript can also interact with elements that are not from within its code which Java doesn’t do. Java applications can only be embedded into html pages and from that point on, the Java application works on its own.

Java and JavaScript are two very different languages, because of that they also have different requirements in order to function properly. Installing Java support in your browser does not mean that it would also be able to support JavaScript applications and vice versa.