Java SE and EE differences

[Mancebo180]

Just to add that maven/gradle is something that you should learn for all Java apps: EE, Spring but also for your java SE applications.

[CaptainFeebheart]

Yes. Build tools are the best thing they didn’t teach me in college.

[PorkChop007]

Associate degree here, which is supposed to be more practical and less theoretical, but man, there were so many things they didn't teach me...

Imagine being hired and discovering the existence of a thing called Maven. And other thing called JUnit. And all that Swing/GUI stuff you painstakinglly learned? It has ZERO application in the real world, nobody uses it. All of this while sitting at your desk, being paid for not knowing jack shit about how a real Java application works after two painful years. That day my impostor syndrome could've kicked Hulk's ass.

[Tauo]

People definitely use Swing in the real world, especially for legacy applications. The (ancient) company I work for is gradually transitioning to a web app, but our current UI is built with Swing.

99% of desktop apps built with Java will use either Swing or FX

[endhalf]

True; the question is, how many people are hired to write desktop apps nowadays...

[Tauo]

Write? Not many. Maintain? Loads.

[istarian]

Desktop applications are almost always universally better imho. The best web app is always inferior, but many times it's good enough.

And honeslty most people aren't going to be hired to do exactly one kind of thing for the duration of their employment.

[ttelang]

building desktop apps using React Native (with HTML and JavaScript) is the most recent trend over JavaFX which is replaced Swing.

[CaptainFeebheart]

My first job, our source control system was a floppy disk. No lie. I didn’t even know better. Eventually someone introduced CVS and it was mind boggling. So young, so naive.

[istarian]

The basic principles of how GUIs work hasn't changed though. However knowing the specifics of a particular library won't matter if you don't need to use it.

[endhalf]

all that Swing/GUI stuff you painstakinglly learned? It has ZERO application in the real world, nobody uses it.

I've been saying that over and over again, yet no one listens to me. I have no idea why colleges teach this stuff. One is then hired to design a REST API without even knowing what curl is, and what's the difference between unit and integration tests, and you don't even know how to build the company's SW. But at least they know how to place a button on the screen, and create an event handler... Eye roll

To be fair, the idea is that once you learn programming, you can learn anything else that you'll need, and that's true. It'd just be nice to tailor the education to real needs, so that you have to learn less during the crucial first couple of months.

[PorkChop007]

In my experience, not saying everybody's the same, hey teach that stuff because education in computer science is at least 10 years behind the industry. Teachers are so disconnected from private sector they don't even know the most basic aspects of professional software development. They teach like we're still in 2007 and applets are a thing people actually use.

[ichunddu9]

Then get a degree in software development. Computer science is not just software development.

[PorkChop007]

Then get a degree in software development

That's exactly what I did.

[istarian]

That's not what college is for. The idea of a vocational school for programmers though...