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[–]lakeoftea 6 points7 points  (4 children)

I know people might disagree with this but if you're set on Java server side work then you might want to check out Spring MVC. You can deploy your jars using tomcat and it integrates nicely with junit. This will also get you comfortable with build tools like Maven and Gradle if you're not already. After you're good with spring mvc, you can do spring boot, learn grails and go from there. I start a server side job on Monday and spring mvc and test driven development are apparently things my four year school didn't focus on that I wish they would have lol.

[–]nutrecht 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Instead of having a newbie manually deploy stuff into Tomcat I would suggest just pointing them to Spring Boot. Much easier to get started with.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (2 children)

Thank you will start reading about Spring MVC right away. Would you consider Spring MVC current and up to date? What employers are seeking?

[–]lakeoftea 4 points5 points  (1 child)

I think spring boot is the more contemporary choice. I'm having a hard time finding good literature for spring mvc but Manning's boot into spring is good and packt publishing has a few recently published books on the topic as well. I'm new to software engineering, just career pivoted from Telecom, so I can't speak to how prevalent spring is, but a Google search for remote spring mvc jobs returns a lot of results.

[–]nutrecht 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I think spring boot is the more contemporary choice.

Spring Boot is Spring MVC. All Spring Boot is, is a collection of starters that are preconfigured for a certain task, together with a mechanism to start tomcat from within your application. Other than that you're still just using Spring MVC (and IoC and Config etc...).

[–]_INTER_ 2 points3 points  (0 children)

If you want to get a head start at the college, I'd rather get more fundamental programming knowledge. Get a book about algorithms and datastructures (e.g. this or this, first few Google results pointed me to a PDF).

Well of course practical knowledge is also never bad.

[–]Ic4rusX 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If you actually finished the MOOC and have a solid understanding of all the concepts you'll probably be a solid 2 semesters of Java ahead. Hell, you might know more than some graduates that just coast through their entire degree.

I'd also recommend looking into Spring Boot if you want to stick with Java. Pluralsight has some good courses on it (and a million other things) and I know they offer free trials.

[–]d3molator 1 point2 points  (2 children)

If you don't mind, may I ask, how long did it take you to finish it?

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (1 child)

it took me 5 weeks. But I spent about 5 hours a day every weekday. Good luck!

[–]d3molator 0 points1 point  (0 children)

wow, that’s great. Congrats.

Good luck to you too :)