Slashdot Mirror
Only 32% of Java developers really know Java
prostoalex writes "Research firm Gartner draws attention to the fact that less than a third of people who put Java on their resume actually know their stuff. The knowledge gap between someone who can successfully write a System.out.println() and someone capable of designing and implementing a complex Java system brings to companies being back-logged with pending projects."
How shocking this news is to me, because it confirmed a survey report I just read yesterday: that 68,015% people lie in their resumes!
Actually, the report is wrong. They just don't read the resumes carefully. The other 68% actually know *Javanese* Java, not Sun Java.
"The knowledge gap between someone who can successfully write a System.out.println() and someone capable of designing and implementing a complex Java system brings to companies being back-logged with pending projects."
We also would have accepted: Only 26% of submitters to Slashdot can create proper sentences.
Also "99% of researchers and statisticians have no idea what they are talking about and don't know what research means"
Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
[This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
Java was the popular thing of it's time. If you didn't know it at the apogee of the internet bubble, you didn't get a job in the computer idustry; it's a lot easier to say that you know it, and hope that you never have to use it. I for one hope that I don't have to write Java code again...
.NET - buzzwords rule the market from the big business' point of view.
Now things are pointing similarly towards C# and
However, those who really know their stuff normally stick to the older languages... hype is good in some ways, but in the grand scheme of things, it's the older, better stuff that will prevail.
I see that I'm not the only one!
"Send an Instant Karma to me" - Yes
For the record I do NOT ask those boring certification style questions that you'd only know the answer to by memorizing the spec. All the questions we ask start with "here's a problem, now solve it with real Java code, please." If I've learned one thing, it's if somebody groans and complains that writing code is so trivial you shouldn't even ask it, then sit there and force them to write code because chances are they can't.
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
Knowing Java is very different from knowing programming. If you can't do a complex project in Java you can't do a complex project in any language. If you can do it in any language, you can do it in Java. The first step might be learning Java, but any good programmer can handle that in a short time. Now granted I'd want someone who knows all the tricks on the team so I don't re-implement the wheel, but a complex project by definition requires many people so that isn't an issue.
HR is far too hung up on what you have already done, not realizing that the data structures and algorithms are what counts, and they are the same in any language.
On the other hand, most of us mortals don't store all the details of API's in our heads. Back in the Stone Age we used manuals and in the Information Age we use the SUN Web site. If your interview objective is to see how someone would get the information to solve the problem, that is fine, but if your objective is to see if that person already has some narrow set of information, you are going to exclude some capable people.
I am mainly a Delphi developer (I should say a Delphi component developer), and my Java experience is only 4 months old, and gee, my Java experience is limited to using JNI to allow a Delphi ActiveX component to invoke an extension module written in Java and using a class loader so that extension module can be reloaded while the ActiveX component is still running.
I don't know the answer to your question about Java collection objects without looking it up, although I have enough sense to know that you have to use Object wrappers for value types in collections and then have to cast those objects back to their original types when you pull Object references out of collections -- I know that from "wasting" time reading Slashdot.
I guess I would fail your interview.
where "MDA" is Compuware's acronym for "buy our software and generate all your code". And since "highly skilled developers recognise the value", anyone who doesn't "recognise the value" and buy their product is an unskilled dolt.
The Army reading list
This is exactly my experience. I've been developing in Java for about 8 years and I think I met just 10 other people who really know their Java. And of those 10 people just about 2 or 3 are able to design an enterprise class application.
:-(
It's not just Java developers, in the booming years a lot of people were hired by IT consulting firms here (NL) that shouldn't be near any computer at all. I've seen system engineers who studied politicology and got an MCSE who don't know the most basic thing about Windows and are not able to solve any problem at all. I've met tens of 'project managers' who don't know anything about IT and even less about software development and are too stubborn to listen to people who do know their shit.
The worst of all are VB 'programmers' who are just able to point and click a basic application, but don't have any feeling for what a programmer should be able to do.
The worst is title inflation. Every donkey is a 'software engineer' these days, and if you are able to actually design a piece of software you should call yourself 'architect', otherwise people won't take you seriously.
Because 'programmers' are seen as monkeys that type and are doing a trick that every other monkey can do.
... or an advertisement for OptimalJ?
This has resulted in a tremendous backlog of projects," says Aad Van Schetsen, Compuware sales director for application development and integration solutions in the Europe, Middle East, Africa region.
Ben van Niekerk, Compuware SA product manager, says locally the backlog is mainly in projects to integrate new applications into Java legacy code.
Van Schetsen says the key to the success of tools such as Compuware's OptimalJ is their use of a model-driven architecture
Tools like OptimalJ ensure best practices and standards as well as enable companies to leverage the core capabilities of their developers by allowing them to focus on applications and not the underlying technologies.
"Although we are still in the education phase, particularly with less experienced Java developers and development companies, momentum is gradually growing with OptimalJ sales increasing threefold in the past financial year."
As long as there are people putting "I know CHMOD and Upload/Download" on their resumes, I guess anything is possible....