I got no clear question from people that I spoke to and other sites.
The question is actually “What are they going to ask me to do when I get a job as a Java developer?”.
I dont want to get answers like : YOu gotta documentate code and add more code to peoples software - I care about the difficulty level of the tasks I have to complete like : “You have to make a server that does this and that” or “you need to redesign the gui”…Thanks in advance!
There’s no possible way to answer this, without knowing the job. There’s too many kinds of programming related jobs that have vastly different skill set requirements. For example, working with a small game development studio is nothing like working with a company that deals in databases and security.
For example, I might do fine working with an indie game development studio of some kind… But I would fall flat on my face if someone asked me to make a large corporate database.
There is only one way to find out: try to learn Java! If by a few months you can type out a simple calculator program, you are on the right track, and most likely skilled enough for Java.
Game development, on the other hand, is a bit more tricky. I would recommend at least a year’s worth of experience before moving into game making.
For everyone it is different, but we cannot really give you a straight answer. We can only tell you how to get a straight answer.
-wes
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For a direct answer, it depends.
However, I do have a friend who works in a predominantly Java tech job. In general, he was required to learn how to use Spring and also learn how to communicate with a SQL database. Since he was dealing with security, most of the things he learned was taught to him by his own tech department.
Honestly, the more you know about different languages and tech, the better. It is usually not good to be a one-trick pony in the computer science field, because technology is always changing rapidly. Learning all the web technologies, and what technologies the company you want to work for uses is vital. Many people have lost their job when a company switches languages to play with a new toy or technology.
Know your prospective company well, and try to be familiar with as many technologies and computer languages as you can.
I have a couple years of experience in small software businesses and start ups and some experience from internships in very large companies, so I can tell you what you’ll be doing at the lower end of the software dev spectrum.
Front End: UI stuff (usually they’ll give you a drawing or an example from another app and you have to mimic it), Be very very familiar with REST api and be able to pick up APIs easily. Learn to decouple your classes as much as possible to avoid huge code overhaul if your boss suddenly decides to change the back end to something using a different API
Back End: Be ready to pick up new languages and tech all the time. Get familiar with cURL and SQL, it should become 2nd nature to you. The people you work with will probably introduce you to lots of technology, the faster you can learn and adopt these technologies the faster you will be able to create things and the faster you’ll move up. I had to learn Scala, Go, PHP, and lots of APIs in just my first year of back-end, it gets easier with experience. So don’t expect to be just using Java and even if you are using Java you’ll be using so many APIs that it wont feel like regular Java.
Also learn Unix you will probably be doing a lot of Unix stuff, lots of git stuff, lots of SQL, most of the Java stuff you do won’t be that hard especially compared to the relatively complicated things you do in game design like AI. Get very familiar with networking, learn NIO and IO and other networking based stuff. Learn some of the different design structures and technology used for concurrent and parallel systems. Ex. Akka .
I have been coding for 2-3 years. I know MVC Spring Hibernate JDBC JavaFX JFrame , Swing (+ streams , lambdas , devicemanager etc etc…generally many stuff), VCS(git only), Python and some C.
It doesn’t really matter how skilled you are. Your employer will hire you if he thinks you are skilled enough. Don’t over think it. Even if you’re not skilled enough for the tasks you get, it doesn’t matter, because your employer hired you. I would suggest you don’t lie about anything to your employer though, so he knows how skilled you are.
If you have to ask yourself “Am I skilled enough” then you are probably not, doubting yourself is quite a strong sign that you are not ready for something/not confident about it, you might need more time.
Sounds kind of harsh but if I ever feel that I need to ask myself “can I do this” then I most likely can’t, if I could then why the hell would I be putting it in my head that I might not and causing all sort of negative effects?
[quote]If you have to ask yourself “Am I skilled enough” then you are probably not, doubting yourself is quite a strong sign that you are not ready for something/not confident about it, you might need more time.
Sounds kind of harsh but if I ever feel that I need to ask myself “can I do this” then I most likely can’t, if I could then why the hell would I be putting it in my head that I might not and causing all sort of negative effects?
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Well, he ask wether he’s skilled enough because he doesn’t know what to expect. So your answer might not really apply on him.
How can you know if you’re skilled enough if you haven’t tried then? You can’t know. Its like saying you hate this kind of food when you’ve never tasted it before, you have no real reason to hate the food. Gibbo is correct, if you don’t believe in yourself then no, you can’t do it.
I’m a drummer in a band and I sure as hell didn’t think I could do half the stuff I can today on a drum kit. But every practice I go in and I believe in myself and guess what? I do awesome stuff I never thought I could do. Sure, I mess up and sometimes I have off days and sometimes I just plain suck, but if you keep at it someday you’ll look back and realize what you’ve accomplished.
Just believe in yourself and practice hard and you’ll be fine, as cheesy as that sounds.
Don’t know but I checked out a book from my library that was basically about a guy ranting on and on about how much he hated his programming job. He said you’ll be asked to complete code in an unreasonably short amount of time. Projects being dumbed half way through because the customer changed his mind. I returned the book without finishing it.