You've already got experience in VB and ASP...ASP.NET is a logical career path. You can use that as a springboard to learn C# and if you really want to you can learn Java from there.
Otherwise, the best way to get started in Java is to get a job where you can convince them you can learn it on the job.
Great XML Library for Java: XStream
on
The Future of XML
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· Score: 1
I've found that XML is great for Object persistence in Java. The library to use is XStream.
A few years ago, I started receiving death threats on my Slashdot journal. After several emails to Taco, which were ignored, he finally responding saying that there was nothing I should do and that I should just ignore them.
I wonder if he would give the same advice to Kathy Sierra?
Granted, no one photo-shopped pictures of me to have a noose next to my head, but a death threat is a death threat. Taco had the opportunity to take action, and he chose not to.
Vault.com tried this with their message boards in the late 90's. It failed spectacularly because disgruntled employees would post personal attacks against management on the site (accusations of illegal behavior, affairs, etc.), which would cause the companies to threaten law suits, etc. In extreme situations, managers who had been attacked on the site started posting offensive / racist postings, which led to even more lawsuits, harmed the site's reputation etc. In the end, they had to close off the message boards and make them subscription only.
That's reminds me of another fun story. A Comp Sci degreed co-worker had written the following code inside the critical path of a rather performance-sensitive application:
When I tried to explain that his code was creating list.size() StringBuffers (in Java 1.4.2), he assured me that some old school chums of his "who had worked on the Java compiler" had assured him that the Java compiler would optimize his code, and only one StringBuffer is created.
(BTW - he initialized the String to "" to because he didn't like that bothersome "local variable might not have been initialized" error)
For the skeptical Comp Sci grads reading this, here is the decompiled bytecode (courtesy dis) for concatenation loop:
Agreed - I've learned through these last few experiences to do my own mini-tech interview for appplicants that claim to know Java. Instead of having them write code, I show them some particularly ugly Java code (taken from real examples I've encountered) and ask them how they would refactor it and what bugs they can find. Works just about as well, especially since most of our projects involve maintanence, not new applications.
I disagree. From personal experience, I've found that job applicants who are Sun Certified Java Programmers at least know Java syntax and SDK libraries. For those without the certification, you just have to hope they didn't get hired by bullshiting their way through the technical questions.
Illustrative annecdote:
Recently I had to work with a very bright Comp Sci graduate of a prestigious Ivy League school. He did well in the interview and professed to know Ruby, Lisp and Perl in addition to Java (which had been "coding since version 1.1"). He knew enough about OOP and patterns to sound like a Java expert and so we hired him. For his first project (a web application) he wrote the following bit of code:
When I asked him why he had used a String constant for true, he patiently explained that Java didn't have object versions of its primitives(!).
I've seen this one from multiple un-certified Java programmers: what if getInvoiceDate() returns null?
Date date = getInvoiceDate(); String output = ""+amt;
This is fine as long as your functional spec allows "null" as a valid value for output. Ours didn't. Oops!
On large projects you don't have time to make every code review an impromptu "Java basics" tutorial. Knowing your team members have a Java Certification that guarantees they're not spending hours learning how to use (or re-implementing!) Integer, StringBuffer and HashMap. This can add a comfort level that makes a big difference in terms of team productivity.
There are a ton of commercial utilities and add-ons for MS Access (check out Access Advisor at your local bookstore), but most of those are just VB apps or ActiveX controls that just do what you could do yourself with a little Visual Basic. Once you have got the basics down from some online tutorials, Access Cookbook by Kurt Getz is a great investment.
MS Access has a large community online, especially comp.databases.ms-access. Google is your friend - just about everything you'll ever want to do has already been done and has VB code examples online.
Here is a thread that has code demonstrating how to dump the contents of an Access database as DDL into text files:
PS - If you are impatient with the limitations of VBA (aka "VB Classic"), there are Microsoft Office interop libraries that will let you automate Access Databases in.NET.
There are a ton of commercial utilities and add-ons for MS Access (check out Access Advisor at your local bookstore), but most of those are just VB apps or ActiveX controls that just do what you could do yourself with a little Visual Basic. Once you have got the basics down from some online tutorials, Access Cookbook by Kurt Getz is a great investment.
MS Access has a large community online, especially comp.databases.ms-access. Google is your friend - just about everything you'll ever want to do has already been done and has VB code examples online.
Here is a thread that has code demonstrating how to dump the contents of an Access database as DDL into text files:
PS - If you are impatient with the limitations of VBA (aka "VB Classic"), there are Microsoft Office interop libraries that will let you automate Access Databases in.NET.
Re:School can help, in more ways than the obvious.
on
How Old is Too Old?
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· Score: 1
People I know who got a CS degree know fundamentals that are important to understand and can better evaluate the buzzword of the month.
Or maybe your knowledge is to esoteric to be useful and to theoretical to be practical. Plus, you never learned anything about solid software construction, your code is sloppy, you are overly concerned with Big O Notation before your code is even functional, and your comments suck (or are non-extant). At least that has been my experience with Comp Sci majors lately.
Go the self-taught route - if anything you'll be more successful at your job.
Don't go back to school. Degrees don't guarantee jobs, and you can (and should teach) yourself in a few weeks what takes months to cover in school.
If you really need instruction, you should consider some instructional videos (well, DVDs). When I was just starting out in VB (after 10 years off from coding), watching just a few Ken Getz videos helped get me kickstarted.
Getting a certification of some kind can help because it proves to interviewers that you really know whatever skill you are advertising. However, actual experience will beat a certification every time.
The job-related benefit of studying CS is that it teaches you how to learn computer-related topics more easily. So you can pick up how to install Sendmail, Postfix, Exchange 2003, or anything pretty quickly after reading the documentation or seeing someone else do it.
Some of my co-workers have degrees in East-Asian Studies, Chemical Engineering and Urban Studies. I'll agree that a Comp Sci gives you a head start on topics like algorithms and data structures, but it hardly has a monopoly on Skill Acquisition, Problem Solving or Critical Thinking.
IHBT HAND
Not at all. Again, look at the grandparent post - I was responding to an assertion that Comp Sci grads would have a leg up on Exchange 2003 installations because of the installation's "complicated" nature - I think we both agree that is hardly the case.
Also, their skill portability is very limited so getting laid off would likely be a bigger blow than if they had a better grounding in the maths.
I'm curious - do you have a specific anecdote to back up this generalization? Because my experience has been that employers place greater weight on hard business experience than theoretical knowledge. I encountered one recruiter who posited it was so bad ("uneducated" coders with experience beating out inexperienced comp sci majors) that he wanted to see the IT equivalent of State Bar Associations (i.e. no coding with out a license!).
The only thing a Masters in Computer Science seems to be good for is justifying a role in middle management (where, ironically, one typically does very little coding) - and that's true of just about every professional career field, not just IT. Associates at Investment Banks typically need an MBA (which they never use) before being hired into a VP role. Journalists seek Journalism degrees, hospital executives need Masters in Health Care Management, etc. etc.
The author was asking about Comp Sci degrees - I'd like to see the Comp Sci department at a major university that offers a course on installing Exchange 2003. Most Comp Sci grads I've met can barely install MS Office
(of course, that's because they primarily use UNIX and Linux in academia...)
I personally believe that if a person has difficulty understanding the basic mathematics or problem-solving that a Computer Science / Engineering degree requires they will have a great deal of difficulty designing a robust system of any reasonable complexity.
LOL...at my shop, one of our Senior Engineers doesn't even have a college degree.
Rule number one is to never apologize for not having a Comp Sci degree in an interview.
(Rule number two is that you don't want to work anywhere that strictly requires it)
I have a Liberals Arts degree and I'm a completely self-taught, working Java developer. The only thing I did do to help my job search was get a Sun Certified Java Programmer certification. Almost no experienced developers give any merit to the thing, but during my job search it was useful to "prove" to the skeptical that I really do know Java.
Definitely worth a listen: he's onto the privacy violations committed by our Government in cooperation with private corporations. After listening to what he has to say, you'll understand why the government would target him.
It can be pretty much summed up as "RMI-like functionality implemented with JavaScript." Having used DWR, I'm not really sure if it uses XMLHttpRequest or something else, because the library abstracts that from the application developer. The server-side can code POJOs and the client-side can code against JavaScript functions. The DWR servlet and configuration file are the "glue" that gets the client-side to the server-side objects.
The limitation I've bumped up against is that the DWR servlet expects all remoting requests to come in via a serlvet mapping of/your_context/dwr/*, which makes is difficult to work with existing web applications that application parameters embedded in the URL path. This can be overcome by implementing a pluggable interface, but it's enough to make me look at using ad-hoc JSON generated from jsp pages instead...
Slashdot Mirror
If anything, it will prove that you truly know Java syntax. A score of 100% can't hurt.
You've already got experience in VB and ASP...ASP.NET is a logical career path. You can use that as a springboard to learn C# and if you really want to you can learn Java from there.
Otherwise, the best way to get started in Java is to get a job where you can convince them you can learn it on the job.
I've found that XML is great for Object persistence in Java. The library to use is XStream.
The closing of Harold's article proposes a basic data format for XML. In fact, that's exactly what XStream provides out-of-the-box.
It could take...months?
A few years ago, I started receiving death threats on my Slashdot journal. After several emails to Taco, which were ignored, he finally responding saying that there was nothing I should do and that I should just ignore them.
4 92819 01606 97388 1756
I wonder if he would give the same advice to Kathy Sierra?
Links:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=102543&cid=87
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=102942&cid=87
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=102942&cid=87
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=103078&cid=87
Granted, no one photo-shopped pictures of me to have a noose next to my head, but a death threat is a death threat. Taco had the opportunity to take action, and he chose not to.
Vault.com tried this with their message boards in the late 90's. It failed spectacularly because disgruntled employees would post personal attacks against management on the site (accusations of illegal behavior, affairs, etc.), which would cause the companies to threaten law suits, etc. In extreme situations, managers who had been attacked on the site started posting offensive / racist postings, which led to even more lawsuits, harmed the site's reputation etc. In the end, they had to close off the message boards and make them subscription only.
Hmm...some of that sounds familiar actually!
Yeah, because, you know, writing a CRUD application and Open Heart Surgery are so similar.
(BTW - he initialized the String to "" to because he didn't like that bothersome "local variable might not have been initialized" error)
For the skeptical Comp Sci grads reading this, here is the decompiled bytecode (courtesy dis) for concatenation loop: By the way, the better performing solution in Java 5 is to re-use a StringBuilder stored in a ThreadLocal.
Agreed - I've learned through these last few experiences to do my own mini-tech interview for appplicants that claim to know Java. Instead of having them write code, I show them some particularly ugly Java code (taken from real examples I've encountered) and ask them how they would refactor it and what bugs they can find. Works just about as well, especially since most of our projects involve maintanence, not new applications.
Illustrative annecdote:
Recently I had to work with a very bright Comp Sci graduate of a prestigious Ivy League school. He did well in the interview and professed to know Ruby, Lisp and Perl in addition to Java (which had been "coding since version 1.1"). He knew enough about OOP and patterns to sound like a Java expert and so we hired him. For his first project (a web application) he wrote the following bit of code: When I asked him why he had used a String constant for true, he patiently explained that Java didn't have object versions of its primitives(!).
I've seen this one from multiple un-certified Java programmers: what if getInvoiceDate() returns null? This is fine as long as your functional spec allows "null" as a valid value for output. Ours didn't. Oops!
On large projects you don't have time to make every code review an impromptu "Java basics" tutorial. Knowing your team members have a Java Certification that guarantees they're not spending hours learning how to use (or re-implementing!) Integer, StringBuffer and HashMap. This can add a comfort level that makes a big difference in terms of team productivity.
Why not get a Sun Certified Business Component Developer Certification instead?
I took a brief look at the Y! message boards once...the incivility of the "discourse" I found there made /. look like the British Parliament.
Yeah, I clicked the wrong link (it was late, I was in a rush)
:(
Always use "Preview"
There are a ton of commercial utilities and add-ons for MS Access (check out Access Advisor at your local bookstore), but most of those are just VB apps or ActiveX controls that just do what you could do yourself with a little Visual Basic. Once you have got the basics down from some online tutorials, Access Cookbook by Kurt Getz is a great investment.
.NET.
MS Access has a large community online, especially comp.databases.ms-access. Google is your friend - just about everything you'll ever want to do has already been done and has VB code examples online.
Here is a thread that has code demonstrating how to dump the contents of an Access database as DDL into text files:
comp.databases.ms-access: Exporting jet table metadata as text?
PS - If you are impatient with the limitations of VBA (aka "VB Classic"), there are Microsoft Office interop libraries that will let you automate Access Databases in
There are a ton of commercial utilities and add-ons for MS Access (check out Access Advisor at your local bookstore), but most of those are just VB apps or ActiveX controls that just do what you could do yourself with a little Visual Basic. Once you have got the basics down from some online tutorials, Access Cookbook by Kurt Getz is a great investment.
.NET.
MS Access has a large community online, especially comp.databases.ms-access. Google is your friend - just about everything you'll ever want to do has already been done and has VB code examples online.
Here is a thread that has code demonstrating how to dump the contents of an Access database as DDL into text files:
comp.databases.ms-access: Exporting jet table metadata as text?
PS - If you are impatient with the limitations of VBA (aka "VB Classic"), there are Microsoft Office interop libraries that will let you automate Access Databases in
People I know who got a CS degree know fundamentals that are important to understand and can better evaluate the buzzword of the month.
Or maybe your knowledge is to esoteric to be useful and to theoretical to be practical. Plus, you never learned anything about solid software construction, your code is sloppy, you are overly concerned with Big O Notation before your code is even functional, and your comments suck (or are non-extant). At least that has been my experience with Comp Sci majors lately.
Go the self-taught route - if anything you'll be more successful at your job.
Don't go back to school. Degrees don't guarantee jobs, and you can (and should teach) yourself in a few weeks what takes months to cover in school.
If you really need instruction, you should consider some instructional videos (well, DVDs). When I was just starting out in VB (after 10 years off from coding), watching just a few Ken Getz videos helped get me kickstarted.
Getting a certification of some kind can help because it proves to interviewers that you really know whatever skill you are advertising. However, actual experience will beat a certification every time.
The job-related benefit of studying CS is that it teaches you how to learn computer-related topics more easily. So you can pick up how to install Sendmail, Postfix, Exchange 2003, or anything pretty quickly after reading the documentation or seeing someone else do it.
Some of my co-workers have degrees in East-Asian Studies, Chemical Engineering and Urban Studies. I'll agree that a Comp Sci gives you a head start on topics like algorithms and data structures, but it hardly has a monopoly on Skill Acquisition, Problem Solving or Critical Thinking.
IHBT HAND
Not at all. Again, look at the grandparent post - I was responding to an assertion that Comp Sci grads would have a leg up on Exchange 2003 installations because of the installation's "complicated" nature - I think we both agree that is hardly the case.
Where they run into problems is anything more advanced than high school math, understanding of algorithms, etc.
Assuming they can't pick up a book and learn it yourself (imagine that!) - which he did, by the way.
Also, their skill portability is very limited so getting laid off would likely be a bigger blow than if they had a better grounding in the maths.
I'm curious - do you have a specific anecdote to back up this generalization? Because my experience has been that employers place greater weight on hard business experience than theoretical knowledge. I encountered one recruiter who posited it was so bad ("uneducated" coders with experience beating out inexperienced comp sci majors) that he wanted to see the IT equivalent of State Bar Associations (i.e. no coding with out a license!).
The only thing a Masters in Computer Science seems to be good for is justifying a role in middle management (where, ironically, one typically does very little coding) - and that's true of just about every professional career field, not just IT. Associates at Investment Banks typically need an MBA (which they never use) before being hired into a VP role. Journalists seek Journalism degrees, hospital executives need Masters in Health Care Management, etc. etc.
The author was asking about Comp Sci degrees - I'd like to see the Comp Sci department at a major university that offers a course on installing Exchange 2003. Most Comp Sci grads I've met can barely install MS Office
(of course, that's because they primarily use UNIX and Linux in academia...)
I personally believe that if a person has difficulty understanding the basic mathematics or problem-solving that a Computer Science / Engineering degree requires they will have a great deal of difficulty designing a robust system of any reasonable complexity.
LOL...at my shop, one of our Senior Engineers doesn't even have a college degree.
Rule number one is to never apologize for not having a Comp Sci degree in an interview.
(Rule number two is that you don't want to work anywhere that strictly requires it)
I have a Liberals Arts degree and I'm a completely self-taught, working Java developer. The only thing I did do to help my job search was get a Sun Certified Java Programmer certification. Almost no experienced developers give any merit to the thing, but during my job search it was useful to "prove" to the skeptical that I really do know Java.
I saw Mr. Rambam speak at the previous H.O.P.E. - he gave a presentation entitled "Privacy: Not What It Used to Be." It's available online in MP3 and M3U format.
Definitely worth a listen: he's onto the privacy violations committed by our Government in cooperation with private corporations. After listening to what he has to say, you'll understand why the government would target him.
DWR - Direct Web Remoting
/your_context/dwr/*, which makes is difficult to work with existing web applications that application parameters embedded in the URL path. This can be overcome by implementing a pluggable interface, but it's enough to make me look at using ad-hoc JSON generated from jsp pages instead...
It can be pretty much summed up as "RMI-like functionality implemented with JavaScript." Having used DWR, I'm not really sure if it uses XMLHttpRequest or something else, because the library abstracts that from the application developer. The server-side can code POJOs and the client-side can code against JavaScript functions. The DWR servlet and configuration file are the "glue" that gets the client-side to the server-side objects.
The limitation I've bumped up against is that the DWR servlet expects all remoting requests to come in via a serlvet mapping of