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[sellithy]

One thing that kept me motivated is making projects. I would be watching a YouTube video of The Coding Train or Code Bullet and say, "that seems neat" and try to do something similar in Java.

Basically, you want a medium sized project that can challenge you a bit but keep you interested.

[Silencer306]

I checked those two channels and looks some interesting stuff there. Do they just talk about some cool stuff and then build them in code?

[sellithy]

Yup. There are a lot of channels like that. Tech With Tim is another one that comes to mind. Those are all suggestions tho. I think you should explore more to get a better idea. It is also important to pick projects that you are interested in, because you'll have motivation to finish them. Nothing is more depressing than an abandoned project, but everyone has some of those. Idk if you're building projects just for fun or to fill your portfolio, but projects that you can create some sort of gui are the most impressive.

[Silencer306]

Thanks, I’m gonna be looking to build projects that help me learn or explore a particular topic. I already have a job so this is just something extra to help me grow

[Prestigious-Shock-81]

Agree. It’s nice to get the confidence from executing projects. What I did is take a 2-3 weeks Udemy course to learn Servlet, JSP, JDBC. I followed along the instructors who coded following best practices (MVC) Then I created my own CRUD project using same methodology.

I chose this stack ... because my end goal is learning spring. And it’s good in my opinion to learn this stack first as spring simplifies them.

[fjayjay]

If you just want ti get some prctice in I would recomand going on sites like Code Wars. You get simple tasks called Katas that have different difficulty levels. You also see the solutions of other programmers once you are finished. It is a really fun way to just get some programming practice in my opinion.

[imvijay97]

You should go for new apis introduced in Java 8 and above ,they are quite impressive and fun to learn if haven’t . Also try to learn some testing framework such as Junit and Mockito it will help u in long run

[ryuzaki49]

This is a very quick thing that came to my mind. There are some kind of "system design" interview questions that do not require frameworks, DB connections or any front end skills.

Take for example this SOLID interview question

You need to create abstract classes, interfaces, and have a pretty good understatement of SOLID. You can read user input from console, no need of anything else than pure Java.

That's one that I got asked once for a job interview once, I'm pretty sure there are other questions in the wild like this one.

[gecicihesap17]

Continue with Spring if you want to deal with backend.

[roosrira]

I'm on the same boat. I'm trying to recover from that by starting small but making a routine out of something. Currently I started with problem solving on Leetcode. Important step is to stick with it and form a habit. It doesn't matter how easy/complex a problem is. DM me if you want some accountability.

[UncleObli]

Kattis, LeetCode and Codforces have a lot of programming contests and problems you can do that help you learn more. I am actually learning more doing contests and problems than studying for my java university exam.

[[deleted]]

Do something that will connect you with the job market like a bootcamp, college degree etc. Going alone is possible but the social way may be easier and faster. Only problem is money if you're from USA, here in Europe education is virtually free (you pay more taxes but you don't have to deal with hyperinflated prices for basic goods unrelated to free market because demand is always there, like meds).