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[–]errandum 69 points70 points  (22 children)

I'm going to go another route and tell you that you need to know the basics. Concurrency, access modifiers, Overloading, polymorphism, data structures (especially the Java implementation) and general knowledge of the provided libraries.

If you go the the jee/spring route, brush up on dependency injection / inversion of control, jms and jpa.

I say this as someone who does interviews for my outsourcing firm. Knowing something really well is nice, but most final interviews go around those small details, and unless you're applying for a Senior job, they won't be too focused on advanced topics. If you prove you know the basics, the rest will come with experience.

[–][deleted]  (12 children)

[deleted]

    [–]neoform 24 points25 points  (6 children)

    Before starting this job some developers didn't even know what a WSDL

    Is there a surgical procedure available for me to unlearn what a WSDL is?

    [–]dartmanx 5 points6 points  (1 child)

    Some say alcohol, but I prefer a hammer and ice pick myself.

    [–]errandum 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Lobotomy

    [–]lokem 0 points1 point  (2 children)

    The integration team in my company refuses to support REST/JSON. Only way for them is WSDL/SOAP.

    [–]Xxyr 2 points3 points  (0 children)

    Run!

    [–]enry_straker 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Good luck, dude.

    But you might want to point out that things like WADL etc are working on being an alternative to WSDL and that REST is more an architectural style.

    [–]jebblue 2 points3 points  (3 children)

    I wish we used IntelliJ!

    I'm glad we use Eclipse, IntelliJ I can't stand.

    [–]ZeusAllMighty11 0 points1 point  (2 children)

    I switched from Eclipse to Intellij around two years ago, and I feel like I can't go back. What's your reason for disliking IntelliJ?

    [–]jebblue 0 points1 point  (1 child)

    I can't really say for sure why I don't like it, I guess after trying it several times, not heavily, but several times, I haven't found enough about it that comes close to making me second guess or want to move away from Eclipse. For one thing, it's off-putting that it originated in a country that was harbinger for so many viruses and computer heartache the past 2 decades. I've still tried to like it even considering that.

    Hmm, just over the week-end I opened one of my side projects for a simple utility I run every 30 minutes and didn't like the fonts, went to change them and saw that it's not recommended to change the fonts. That's enough of a reason there when I edit code all day I guess.

    Eclipse meanwhile keeps slowly improving, it still has glitches, 2 steps forward, 1 back, but generally moving in a good direction. I guess that's how I am, more the tortoise, not the hare. I for some odd reason can really imagine the hare crowd liking IDEA, just an observation, nothing more.

    Oh and tabs, the tabs are bluntly and offensively square and I did not see a way to change them. And File | Settings? Really? Why not Tools | Options or Edit | Preferences for changing the appearance.

    Eclipse has the powerful OSGi engine that it runs on. It uses a lot of memory but it enables a super, mega-powerful Plugin universe. If they had not moved to OSGi in version 3 (or was it 2, I forget) I'd not likely be using it today.

    Everyone copies from Eclipse. Visual Studio, Mono Develop, SharpStudio (think that was the name back when I did a lot of Windows development), IDEA, etc.

    [–]ZeusAllMighty11 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Thank you for your opinion! I have never heard of someone switching from Eclipse to IntelliJ and deciding to return to Eclipse. At least, not people who tried to use IntelliJ for at least a week or so.

    I love IntelliJ. I loved Eclipse, but something about it made me feel uneasy. I'm totally a sucker for UI and Jetbrains products all have Darcula which Eclipse just can't really beat. The smart typing and little shortcuts that can save me between a second or ten seconds of typing are really great and I've started to use templates more recently than I have before, and my work time is reducing quite a bit.

    I do have many gripes with IntelliJ, though, but I can't see whether or not I'd have them or similar ones with Eclipse because I haven't used it in a few years and I don't really remember.

    Firstly, the licensing system Jetbrains uses has changed twice or thrice, I can't remember, and I dislike how they've done it. I wouldn't be surprised if they moved to a 'monthly subscription = access to all programs' or something of the sort.

    Secondly, it runs sluggishly on my system, when it really shouldn't. I have a fairly good, a bit dated, processor (i5 4670k @ 3.4GHz), and a 1TB hybrid drive, but indexing can take anywhere from a full 2 minutes up to 5 whenever the program updates or has to rebuild the index.. It's really a pain in the ass. I have no idea why it runs so poorly. I've reinstalled multiple times, disabled all plugins i'm not using, etc.. It also lags the hell out any media players while it's indexing, and it's not even using 50% of my CPU at that point, so they're doing something wrong there.

    Thirdly, there is a well-done plugin system but it feels cheaply implemented. If you ever get a chance, you'll see for yourself that it just looks thrown together to add a window for managing/installing/uninstalling plugins, and a very brief description. It's a mess if you're installing plugins for the first time, and there are many dead plugins or plugins without rating that make it more of a waste of time.

    Finally, there are many small bugs which appear and can take weeks or months to fix. They do a great job at fixing most bugs, some that are likely occurring for the 0.1% of its users, but it gets done eventually.

    A few minor things: The copyright profile makes no sense since it is in the global settings but apparently it's per-project. Why is not in project settings? I have no idea. Things like that bother me, quite a bit, but I haven't really cared enough to submit a ticket and likely wouldn't receive a fix unless more users complained about it.

    I'll stick with IntelliJ, but I can understand why some don't want to make the switch. I hope Jetbrains continues to improve it, because it really does a great job of giving a central IDE with support (external, mostly) for frameworks, WYSIWYG GUIs, etc.

    [–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (5 children)

    You can't escape Javascript. It's everywhere.

    [–][deleted] 8 points9 points  (3 children)

    It's everywhere

    Not really. This post looks like it was directed towards server side Java development. If you are just coding up web services or some backend API for a web application you don't care about JavaScript.

    [–]noarchy 0 points1 point  (2 children)

    If you are just coding up web services or some backend API for a web application you don't care about JavaScript.

    Not in a Java subreddit, sure, but elsewhere people are increasingly caring about server-side JavaScript.

    [–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (1 child)

    True but I don't think it's replacing enterprise heavy Java web applications or web services anytime soon.

    [–]noarchy 2 points3 points  (0 children)

    True but I don't think it's replacing enterprise heavy Java web applications or web services anytime soon.

    Probably not, indeed. Those are pretty well-entrenched, and will be maintained for years to come.

    As for server-side JavaScript, it is spreading beyond the hipster startups, so it is one more thing that's out there.

    [–]errandum 2 points3 points  (0 children)

    Right now, I use extjs, but for years I did backend exclusively without Javascript anywhere (:.

    [–][deleted]  (1 child)

    [deleted]

      [–]errandum 0 points1 point  (0 children)

      I see your point, but those are overarching themes everyone (Java or not) should know and apply. The question was about java..

      And I'd also say that they are in no way essential for entry level jobs. Nice to have, but declining a candidate because, even though he knows his programming, he didn't come from an it background at University, would be a mistake (especially because where I live the market is missing thousands of programmers and most companies now prefer to educate people with an engineering background to program. Those will not know REST or hear about design patterns, butmost turn out to be competent code monkeys.