Technofriends

I have been a Java fan right from the day i thought of doing my engineering in Computer Science. When i really did start learning Java, it came in as a pretty easy to learn language. However, often i see many developers struggling with the language owing its vastness and huge platform.

In this post, i am presenting a few tips for those of you who are planning to start off there career as a Java Developer or thinking of learning this language. 

1.) Write lots of code. Have fun with it! Collaborate with people who are more experienced than you and learn from them. Join an open-source project. Code reviews are a great way to learn. Don’t be embarrassed when people find problems in your code; fix them and have fun watching your code and your skills improve.

2.) Buy a reference book like Java 2 Complete Reference and keep it at your desk. Developers can use it to look at the code examples and such while they work. 

 

Java

3.) Learn to use your tools well. What i mean is that dont learn just enough to get by rather become an expert user with the tools. After you’ve learned all the items in menus and context menus, and after you’ve learned the most important key bindings, then Google “tips and tricks” for your IDE.It really helps and you will see the benefits come to you in the days to come.

4.) Learn the Java platform APIs. There are a huge number of well-written and performance optimized classes in the Java platform, along with some utility classes around them. Make sure you have a good grasp of all the available functionality in the platform before you write your own code. For example, there’s no reverse() method on the java.util.List interface. but there does exist a Collections class that contains a lot of utility methods that operate on collections, like List, and it provides a reverse() method. 

5.) Have a mentor or a Godfather.Newcomers should find one or more mentors as soon as they can.No doubt Google makes finding information easier than ever, but nothing beats interacting with an expert. 

6.) Don’t be overwhelmed by the language or the platform. If you break it down, the basics of the language are based on object-oriented programming, threading, concurrency, and event-driven programming. It’s necessary to become a master of these concepts since the rest of your career will depend on this foundation.

7.) Programming is still a craft, so the more you can work with senior developers, the more you’ll learn of the important stuff the computer science professors don’t teach. If you have time, join an open-source project and help out in any way you can to learn and to build credibility with your peers.

I hope the above tips help those of you who are planning to enter the world of Java and also those of you who are already into the world of Java to grow and develop your skillset.

You can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/vaibhav1981

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