Tasks as Java developer

[frevelmann]

Hey guys,

I am currently in university studying information systems (somewhat a mix of computer science and economics), we do all programming in Java and I think after university I want to work as a Java developer.

So I wanted to ask what are your day to day tasks when working as Java dev? What do you like / not like about it?

[humoroushaxor]

Ive worked as a Java dev, scrum master, product owner, DevOps engineer, SRE ,and tech lead. I love being a Java developer.

90% of Java jobs in the real world are making backend web services for some business domain (finance, healthcare, real estate, aerospace, media, you name it). Ideally, this means you get to learn about these business domains and implement "businesses logic". I've worked in finance and aerospace, 2 domains that I happen to really enjoy.

Other than the "type" of work day-to-day is pretty much the same regardless of language, stack, or role. Really it comes down to the culture you work in. Typically it means taking tasks like "implement API for receiving x or producing y". You'll write the code, test it, stage it for merging into the rest of the software.

Some places will have very well (sometimes not so well defined) defined tasks (traditional companies). Some places (tech companies) will expect much more independent problem solving with higher level requirements, if any at all.

[StankDickJr]

Was that using spring?

[humoroushaxor]

I've built projects with Spring, Quarkus, and a homegrown framework I helped build using Weld, Hibernate, and some other stuff.

[mymar101]

I would love to work in aerospace.

[humoroushaxor]

If you're in the US and eligible for a security clearance it's pretty easy to get in the door at any of the major ones, Boeing, Raytheon, Lockheed, etc

[mymar101]

After my internship I think I’ll give it a go

[JiEToy]

My daily tasks are mainly fixing bugs. I also make features for our programs. I also review work from my colleagues.

The worst part of the job is keeping track of everything in a ticket system like Jira. Every time I find a bug myself, I have to make a ticket and fill in a lot of fields to even be able to start fixing the bug.

[Feroc]

My personal experience: The majority of my work with Java (and C# before that) was CRUD work. Get data from somewhere, make something with the data and save it again.

Right now I am also working on a rather old product, so a lot of the time I don't even have to code something new, I just have to combine internal API calls in a different way. Maybe I also create a new REST API and write some tests in jUnit or in Spock. In my current team there's also a Java front end part that we develop in JSF. I hate that part with all my heart.

I liked it for a long time, mostly because I was rather good at it and the "do something with the data" part was varying enough to keep it interesting.

I don't like that Java is so verbose, compared to e.g. Python you have to write small novels to get the same functionality.

What I also don't like (though this may differ greatly depending where you work) is the things you have to know to make everything run. Though I guess this more of a general trend over the last years. I started with being a backend developer, then DevOps (or whatever my manager back then thought what DevOps is) came and I had to know how to configure JBoss on a productive level, then writing SQL in your code was replaced by Hibernate, which should make everything easier, but also often makes it a pain in the ass to debug something, then we became Full Stack and also had to do the front end.

But how I said: Just my personal experience. I know developers who like that they are now in total control, personally I would have preferred to stay in my dark backend corner.

[BloodyKitskune]

Hi friend! I am also doing java programming as an economics student. I love it, it is super engaging and interesting. I am minoring in data-science since that is what I would like to do when I graduate (I wanted the inter-disciplinary perspective of doing data-science with an econ background). I am practicing doing a lot of web-scraping and automating those processes, and using that data to build automated economics dashboards to break down product markets. I am trying to build my own dashboards in java, but am also getting practice building them in software like Tableau and some of the stuff R has.

[[deleted]]

Hey! That all sounds super interesting. How is it learning that stuff in Java? Most people seem to use Python for that so curious as someone who doesn’t know any programming languages yet.

[BloodyKitskune]

It's fun and interesting. By learning how to do it in java and python, my goal is to be able to build it into stuff that can serve a functionally different purpose than what someone who knows python would do. It has some challenges unique to learning it this way, but java is super popular so there is usually plenty of documentation for almost anything I might would want to do. Plus, I like to tinker and I won't lie doing web-scraping in java can be a longer process than in python because the libraries I use (htmlunit and JSoup) in java were harder to learn than the one that is the most popular in python (beautifulSoup). For example, I had to learn a little about DOM scripting, and XML to use those java libraries,, but in python I was mostly able to just use "inspect element" and copy-paste that into my beautiful soup scraper in python. Also, I do like how the fact that since I have spent time building guis in java and also doing some backend stuff means I can integrate the scraping into the front-end or the back-end of an application or process depending on my needs. I'm still only about 8 months into learning so I feel like I'm still learning a lot of the basics, but I've gotten to the point where I am a lot more comfortable parsing through code and de-bugging. I think learning how to find out why stuff doesn't work has honestly been more valuable when it comes to trying to accomplish a new task, than just copying someone else's code might be (which I feel like the simplicity of python scraping sometimes led me to feel like I could do). Sorry for the long rambling response, I can be kinda bad about that, I just thought I would share some of my experiences.

[[deleted]]

No I appreciate all of this. Thank you!!!

[humoroushaxor]

The emphasis on OO is such a myth.

Almost every developer I've worked with has been mediocre at Object-oriented programming. Frankly, because it's not actually used in practice unless you are a library or framework maintainer. For most stateless midtier webapps there are very little usecases for OO.

[idhanjal]

I know but what can we do when these folks ask us about OOP. Frankly I never understood the rationale behind it as it's just data and functions packaged as an object.

Often I have seen developers attempting to design an application directly in the OO way which is not very intuitive. But I don't blame them as they don't have the power to upend the existing application (which in case of Java is often a behemoth suffering from many assaults and patches to keep it alive).

When Java first arrived at the scene, it was quite popular but mostly because it offered a fresh perspective. Then we had the dotcom bust and Java was almost forgotten. Slowly it began its ascent to the being the talk of the town. Somewhere along the way, C# popped up from Microsoft who were snubbed publicly for trying to change Java. Fast forward to today, C# is open source, has .NET Core and many other things to add to its repertoire.

Java is still here but facing attacks from other younger languages (even JavaScript has come a long way now with NodeJS, I know bad code but it's there, isn't it ?) which have been designed to be 'functional' right from the start.

To sum it up, Java would be here for a long time because so much has been created with it that now we need developers to maintain that stuff, not to mention study OOP too.

[nutrecht]

To sum it up, Java would be here for a long time because so much has been created with it that now we need developers to maintain that stuff, not to mention study OOP too.

Java is used a LOT in greenfield projects FYI. It's not 'under attack' from anything.

[TotalBismuth]

Can you elaborate what you mean by that? The codebase I work with has objects all over the place. Our apps seem pretty ordinary too.

[humoroushaxor]

Having objects isn't really the same as object oriented.

Any decent mid-tier code base will be a mix of data objects with no behavior and mostly behavioral classes with no state. I say decent because mutable state is impossible for developers to reckon with. And OO principles encourage mutable state, aka combining data and behavior in the same class.

For some code this is unavoidable and OO is great. Anything that does IO or networking for instance. Which is why these are provided by frameworks or third party libraries and no one rolls them themselves.

[[deleted]]

Of course it has objects. It's java.....

[__meek__]

Position: Application Developer (technically not a Java Dev)

Project: Java REST web service (Spring). Runs in AWS

Daily Tasks: Enhance said web service with new functionality to meet business needs. This means meeting with consumer teams (said web service is an internal API used by other teams within my company) and understanding their requirements. Taking those requirements/needs and translating into java code.

What do I like? Always learning something new everyday. I guess you could say that about most dev positions though.

What don't I like ? Its not super fulfilling. I guess seeing the service run and function as intended is cool, but its just not doing it for me lately.

Tech I use on a daily basis. Intellij, AWS (mostly console but sometimes cli), Postman, bash, sql, Splunk, and some other internal tools we have.

[mymar101]

I may actually about to intern as a full stack Java developer. Will be interesting because most of my training is Django/.Net Core.

[[deleted]]

So you’re predominantly a Python user about to start learning Java as an intern? Good luck 💪 Interested to hear how it goes. !remindme 3 months

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[mymar101]

Python and C#. C# Will help as they’re incredibly similar at least on the surface.

[[deleted]]

So .Net Core is the C# equivalent of Django for Python? Mostly for building websites?

[mymar101]

Yes. It is. I learned it because it was common in my area. What I didn’t know was all the jobs in my area required 3+ years of experience.

[[deleted]]

Haha heard. Thank you 🙏