Story
Now there will be a lot of soap about how long it took me to look for a job, how hard it was and blah blah blah. Therefore, if you are not interested, scroll down to the tips). About 2.5 years ago I realized that I wanted to change something in my life. There were enough reasons for this. I studied to be a programmer, although I studied correspondence (C++, Delphi, and then the very top). I had knowledge since school - Pascal, Basic. That's all. What the hell is not joking, I thought. And I started scouring the forums in search of information. My choice fell on Java. I started reading books. What haven't I read? Thinking in Java , Java. The Complete Reference , Head First Java . All this began to be read. The first two books are written in a reference style. And it was very difficult for me to read them. But I liked the last one. It is written easily, in practically understandable language and there are pictures) I read it. But the downside of all these books is the lack of a sufficient number of practical problems. And then I came across this post - I am retraining people to be Java programmers . I am grateful to fate for this meeting) I learn about Javarash. At that time the project was still raw. Levels 10-15 were implemented. I went through them quickly enough. I started helping people in a group on VK. Then, thanks to hubert, I was hired as a volunteer for “technical support”. Helping newcomers became my job) Sometimes I would sit until late at night, explaining to the newcomer what was what. These explanations also helped me a lot. By explaining, I myself understood the material and the basics of Java better. When I reached level 19 I went for an interview for the first time. I read articles on Habré and other resources about interviews, wrote a resume and started sending it out to everyone. After the first interview, I realized that it was too reckless to look for a job) Yes, I knew the basics of OOP, collections, multithreading, the difference betweenArrayListandLinkedList. But I haven’t even heard what TomCat, Maven, Servlet, JUnit are. I got a little carried away. No levels appeared on JR, so I didn’t know where to start learning J2EE. Yes, and I was simply lazy. For some time I simply answered questions in the VK group and in this community. New tasks have appeared. They were more difficult. Big challenges have arisen. I'm back to Java again. I took the issue of learning more seriously. I found a couple of programmers I knew. They helped me start learning J2EE. I started learning JS, CSS, HTML, Servlet API, Spring, Hibernate, JDBC. I tried to do something at home. About three months later I wrote up my resume again and started going for interviews. I went about 10 times, but I still couldn’t get a job. In some places there was a lack of knowledge, in others there was arrogance, in others I lied too much about my work experience). Participated in the Ua Web Challenge. In short, the results were disappointing. It was also not possible to get into real projects from JR. Not enough time and blah blah blah. In short, I came up with excuses for myself) I had almost given up. But life always makes its own adjustments. And it so happened that my nose was bleeding, but I had to change jobs. I got stuck in books for two months. Improved theory and practice. I compiled my resume again and sent it out. These are not the easiest times in the country. Therefore, there were only two interviews. At the end, I was asked to do another test task, then there was a technical interview. And I finally received an offer. It's finished! And now I’ve been working as a programmer for the second week. The flow of information is simply colossal. I'm currently on probation. After finishing it, I will write another article. And now I would like to give some advice to future programmers.
Adviсe
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Don't waste your time. Study anywhere, any time of the day or night. Read books, watch lectures, solve problems. Don't be lazy. I really understand that if I had not been lazy, I would have found a job much faster.
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Learn English. My English is slightly below average. I can read books, but I look in the dictionary. So I thought that this would be enough. Read the original book from the very beginning. Watch the video in English. If your English is at a low level, improve.
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Start your project. Your project will help you understand how J2EE works. It is advisable to use the web, databases, multithreading, and frameworks in the project.
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Never give up! Do not give up. I went through about 20 interviews. In one office, HR told about a guy who went to them for an interview on the 8th and was hired on the 9th.
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Lie/Don't lie about work experience. This is an eternal topic for holivars on forums. I tried this and that. If you indicate that you have no work experience, the number of interviews drops somewhere between 40-60%. If you indicate that there is, the chance of passing an interview drops by 70-80%. If you do indicate it, my advice is to prepare for the fact that you will be asked about the technologies you used on the project. You need to understand them very well.
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All OK! Be calm. Don't be nervous before and during the interview.
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Go to interviews. You have nothing to lose. If you didn’t pass, ask the person who interviewed you about your gaps. If there were tests, ask to take a piece of paper with assignments home (I was given assignments only once), or as soon as you left the building, immediately write down from memory the assignments that you could not solve. The interview will show you your gaps.
What you should ideally know
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Spring - the book Spring in Action helped me . There are a bunch of tutorials on Habré and other resources.
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Hibernate is a book from the same series Hibernate in action . You can also find a lot of tutorials on the Internet on how to use Spring and Hibernate together.
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JDBC is a very necessary thing. I also took the information from Google + a lecture from Golovach . This is the first one. There are 7 of them in total.
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SQL - you can’t live without it. Here's a great resource .
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HTML&&CSS is a good resource (may Sepp and Company forgive me for links to other people’s projects =)) The free course is quite enough to get you started.
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JS - there is a course on codeacademy . But the course is not very extensive. The very basics are covered. This is a good book , but in English. Yes, this is very good) You can also find other courses that interest you there.
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Servlet - I don’t even know what to suggest. I haven't read any books on them. I took everything from the same tutorials.
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TomCat is a container for servlets. Brings up your web application. All the same tutorials. Don't be lazy - run it from the command line. Experiment with the settings. If you just connected it to the IDE and press the Run button, you don’t know how to communicate with it).
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Maven and Ant are project builders. Maven is of course more common now. But if you work with Ant, it will be a big plus. I took the information from the same tutorials. There are a lot of tutorials on the hub on Spring+Hibernate+TomCat+Maven/Ant.
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Patterns - you don't need to know 23 patterns from GOF (Gang of Four - Gang of Four.) 5-6 you need to know. In principle, those that go to Javarush are enough.
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Lectures by Golovach. I watched 1 Core course and almost the entire Junior course. Almost all the points that I described above are in his lectures . And Javarush often refers to it.
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