Java Training Question

M

Matthew Hinton

I am an unemployed web developer with php, perl, and asp programming
experience and in order to be able to widen my job search I am
considering getting some formal training in Java. I am looking for
training recommendations in order to be able to do Java web development.
Also will this training be appealing to prospective employers or just
a waste of my time and money. Any feedback I get will be greatly
appreciated.
 
T

Thee_Psycho

Can;t realy provide any 1st hand experiance,as I am desperatly trying to
change career and java has just fallen in my path. However some one did
recemmoned to me that the way to go more .net oreintated direction, this
came from a VB developer, with a web background, also looking for work.

I am doing a degree witht the open university, and employers seem to like
the whole self motivated to learn thing, and a genuine interest in your
field of work out side of the working hours, rather than teh actually
content. I am studying for a degree in computing, yet recently got a job
doing 2nd line support, totaly unlrelated areas i feel.
 
D

Dave Glasser

I am an unemployed web developer with php, perl, and asp programming
experience and in order to be able to widen my job search I am
considering getting some formal training in Java. I am looking for
training recommendations in order to be able to do Java web development.
Also will this training be appealing to prospective employers or just
a waste of my time and money. Any feedback I get will be greatly
appreciated.

I wouldn't say the training would be a waste of time and money, if it
gives you a firm foundation in Java, but I doubt that the training
alone would make you competitive in the current Java job market. There
are too many Java developers available with RW experience. My own
opinion of most formal technical training is that if it's not followed
up with a significant amount of applying what you've learned to actual
projects, then it will be mostly forgotten, and in that case it would
be a waste of time and money. It'd be kind of like taking piano
lessions but never actually practicing on the piano.

I would advise you to spend the money you would otherwise spend on
training on a collection of books on the core Java language and its
related technololgies-- Servlets, JSP, EJB, Swing, etc. etc.--and then
get busy reading the books and writing real code. Fortunately,
virtually all of the development tools you'll need can be had for
free. Write actual, useful applications after you've mastered the
basic Hello World stuff. If you want to learn Java web stuff (which is
probably where most of the opportunities still are) write something
useful and challenging like a bugtracker, or a web front-end for CVS,
or a threaded discussion forum.

By doing what I described above, the knowledge you would gain would
stay with you, rather than be forgotten in a few weeks. You would
(presumably) be able to handle any technical interviews well.
Moreover, having real code to show to prospective employers would make
you a known, proven quantity, which would give you an edge (assuming
the code is well-crafted) even over those experienced developers who
could only talk about the work they've done for previous employers.
And it would show them evidence of a certain drive and self-direction
that should appeal to most programming managers.
 
M

Matthew Hinton

Thank you for the informative reply. I will probably take your advice
and see if I can't work on a project of my own to develop my skills and
expand the pool of jobs I apply for.
 
D

Dave Glasser

Thank you for the informative reply. I will probably take your advice
and see if I can't work on a project of my own to develop my skills and
expand the pool of jobs I apply for.

You're welcome, and I would also stress that you should put more
effort into learning the core Java language over the related APIs
(Servlets, EJBs, JSP, JDBC, etc.) Although it's possible, for
instance, for an ASP or PHP programmer to become somewhat productive
with JSP with relatively little effort, if you're going to work on
large-scale enterprise systems you really need to understand what's
going on under the hood. Make sure you thoroughly understand OO
concepts such as inheritance, polymorphism, encapsulation,
loose-coupling, abstract classes, interfaces, etc., along with
threading fundamentals, exception handling, initializer blocks, static
initializer blocks, etc.
 

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