Lost in Java Jungle

[Lee Kian Giap]

After 3 years working as Java Developer,

Experience Gained
- 1 year on pure JSP/Servlet development on legacy web application
- 2 years on full development cycle of 3 projects (sole developer on code writing) using Spring, Hibernate/JPA, JSF on Oracle DB and Weblogic platform, with Subversion. (using Eclipse IDE)

Lack of skills:
- Concurrency
- JUnit and other Testing
- Performance ... maybe tools like JProfile
- Maven + Remote Repository(e.g. Archiva), Ant, Continuos Integration (e.g. Continumm)
- GoF Design Pattern / J2EE Architecture Design knowledge
- UML (better design)

What I know at least at this moment, I need to brush up my skill on Testing part (TDD, Unit Test, Integration Test, Test Coverage ... ) because it is the fundamental skill that needed (even though the team doesn't emphasize).

Certification Gained:
- SCJP6
- SCWCD5
- SCBCD5

--------------------

If I want to move to higher position , what is the position will be ? what step I need to take to move up ?

Please provide as many Info as you can to guide me on my career , thanks for all your insight suggestion !!!

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

Lee,
Your goal would be to a more experienced developer and then a senior developer. Titles vary, but that's the idea.

Of the areas you listed, I think testing and patterns are most important to learn first.

[Hussein Baghdadi]

Sorry but I don't think UML has any thing to do with better designs.

[Lee Kian Giap]

Jeanne Boyarsky wrote:Lee,
Your goal would be to a more experienced developer and then a senior developer. Titles vary, but that's the idea.

Of the areas you listed, I think testing and patterns are most important to learn first.

Thanks for your suggestion, really appreciate !

May I know how different is a Senior Developer as compare to the normal Developer in your term (yes ... title vary)? Wish to get more descriptions from you. What next after Senior Developer ? Thanks !!!

[Lee Kian Giap]

John Todd wrote:Sorry but I don't think UML has any thing to do with better designs.

Thanks for your justification. I am new to UML though, maybe it is a language for modeling a system and to communicate in team, it start working from capture requirements, make sure the end product is what the user want ... some sort of this I think.

Well, I will more interested on usually what type of development team will use UML?

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

Lee,
A senior developer has more experience than a junior developer. That's probably not what you wanted out of a definiton though . A senior developer has worked with more libraries, has more experiences, is more familiar with tradeoffs and non-functional requirements, needs less supervision, suggests alternatives, etc.

UML is a way of representing design. It doesn't make you a bitter designer but it is a standard way of expressing design and something you should definitely learn at some point.

[arulk pillai]

In addition to what Jeanne had suggested, there are ways to fast track your career. It depends on individuals. These programmers have a hidden experience acquired by learning from others' experience through books, forums, helping others, their and others' failures, proactively engaging in self-taught projects & tutorials, contributing to open-source projects and frequenting industry specific websites for updates.

You have identified what you need to do next, the next step is to to get it done. Good luck with it.

[Lee Kian Giap]

Jeanne Boyarsky wrote:Lee,
A senior developer has more experience than a junior developer. That's probably not what you wanted out of a definiton though . A senior developer has worked with more libraries, has more experiences, is more familiar with tradeoffs and non-functional requirements, needs less supervision, suggests alternatives, etc.

UML is a way of representing design. It doesn't make you a bitter designer but it is a standard way of expressing design and something you should definitely learn at some point.

Thanks for your explanation ! I think I roughly get the idea, it is like a junior and senior developer both can write a business logic using Container/Collection ... just that senior know the entire Collection hierarchy and Map hierarchy classes in Java, and use the appropriate one ... but junior just writing code for the sake or writing.

Now I understand the testing part is so important to make a person more independent, a fully and well testing code using correct practice will add points to developer, since requirement always explored and changed during implementation. It somehow also increase the productivity ... well, not so sure on this. I need to focus on this area !

One question here , does a Java Developer (Junior/Senior) need to go through System Analyst position before he/she is competent for team lead job ?

[Lee Kian Giap]

arulk pillai wrote:In addition to what Jeanne had suggested, there are ways to fast track your career. It depends on individuals. These programmers have a hidden experience acquired by learning from others' experience through books, forums, helping others, their and others' failures, proactively engaging in self-taught projects & tutorials, contributing to open-source projects and frequenting industry specific websites for updates.

You have identified what you need to do next, the next step is to to get it done. Good luck with it.

Thanks for your insight view on gaining hidden experience ! Learning from book can gain the author's experience without "re-invent the wrong path". I found that contributing to open-source projects is one that will motivate me, I will go ahead ! Any other good open-source website with project related to java for developer to contribute other than sourceforge ?

[Hussein Baghdadi]

Lee,
Don't bother yourself so much with this titles things, just try to enjoy what you are doing and love your craft.
Personally I wish I will deserve the "Programmer" title one day, I don't care about the seniority and other titles, programming to me is a noble thing.
Junior programmers as the name applies are novices:
They may not be able to trouble shoot a problem by themselves.
They may not have the intuition.
They may not see the whole picture.
They need moderating and supervising.
Junior programmers aren't dumbs or just coders, simply they are standing on the first step of their career (the same is true whether you are a musician, doctor, lawyer ...).
SourceForge isn't the only host, many and many others exist:
Apache, GitHub, BitBucket, Google Code ...

[Ernest Friedman-Hill]

Jeanne Boyarsky wrote:It doesn't make you a bitter designer

Oh, but it can -- it can make you a bitter designer. I've seen it happen.

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

Ernest Friedman-Hill wrote:

Jeanne Boyarsky wrote:It doesn't make you a bitter designer

Oh, but it can -- it can make you a bitter designer. I've seen it happen.

Better; bitter. What's the difference? Only one letter.

[David Newton]

Jeanne Boyarsky wrote:[UML] doesn't make you a bitter designer [...]

I dunno, I'm pretty crabby about it sometimes.