How to learn Java if you are already over 30...

Dossier

• Who: Artem Panasyuk
• Worked as: unemployed, previously - system administrator and head of the city Internet network operation department
• Place of residence: Ulyanovsk, Russia
• Age at the start of Java training: 35
• First job as a programmer: 9 months after starting my studies
• Original success story

Just think, 30-something is not a reason to write yourself off as scrap and consider yourself unfit for training. Setting a goal, solving problems, filtering and absorbing information is what you need if you really want to become a programmer. At the age of 35, Artem, being a family man with two children, managed to master Java, find a job and quickly outgrow the “junior” level.

The goal has been set

I set myself a goal to learn Java in 1 year. The difficulty of completing this task was aggravated by the presence of two children ( 0.5 years and 4 years ), lack of work at that time, and age. At that time I was 35 , and this seemed to me the main problem. To give the most truthful picture, I will say that there were also advantages - a background in the form of a physics diploma, experience as a system administrator, experience in creating websites ( HTML + CSS ), as well as 5 years of work in a large telecommunications company (head of the operation department of a city Internet network). Nevertheless, there was essentially no direct programming experience other than Basic at school and TurboPascal at university.

Study and interview

I was inspired, firstly, by the loss of my job, and secondly, by the blog of one “colleague in misfortune.” Around the end of January 2015, I came across Java Rush - and away we go... When I started studying, I bought “ The Philosophy of Java ” by Bruce Eckel. By April, I completed the first 10 levels and solved almost all the problems . I was lucky: just then a promotion started on JavaRush, and I bought a subscription. By August, I had completed about 23-25 ​​levels of lectures and about 20 levels of problems. I went on vacation for two weeks and received an invitation to an interview with the only large company in my region. I worked through a rough list of questions in advance, and it bore fruit: I passed the technical interview normally. This took approximately 40 minutes of Skype communication . The second stage was writing a test task. Just the list of technologies that I needed to use horrified me: JSF + Primefaces , Hibernate , Java7 , PostgreSQL , Glassfish ... And among the additional, sort of “optional” technologies were JUnit and Maven . I needed to write a typical CRUD "Online Library" web application with the ability to authorize and manage user roles. At that time, I didn’t have a clear idea about Java EE, but don’t give up at the last moment! In 2 weeks, I finally built something that seemed to me to fully meet the requirements (except for unit tests). To my surprise, almost on the same day that I sent the task for review, they called me back and made me a job offer. That's how I became a Java Junior Developer.

One year later

At the moment ( March 2016 ), the probationary period is already behind us, as are many worries and doubts. But now, a year later, I can confidently say that I have never regretted the money, time, or effort spent. I wish the same for you!

And almost a year later :)

My story of mastering the heights of Java continues today ( December 2016 ). Here's what I did in a year: I successfully completed three months of probation by the beginning of 2016 . In fact, it was a daily horror, especially after overwriting someone else's commit or sudden conflicts during a rebuy in Git .

1. Я получил место Java-разработчика в компании «Симбирсофт». Компания разрабатывает ПО на заказ и помогает в подборе команды для разработки. Для моего первого проекта были нужны Java 8, JavaEE, SSO, Hibernate, JSF, PrimeFaces, Liquibase, Postgres, Maven. В качестве serverа приложений использовали Wildfly9. После пары месяцев перешел на следующий проект.


2. В течение 4-5 месяцев был единственным разработчиком backend-части микросервиса. На основе пула технологий, которые я перечислил выше, «запorл» с нуля новое приложение. Его особенность в том, что написанный Frontend-разработчиком (AngularJs) виджет «общался» с Backend по технологии REST.


3. В октябре 2016 года я успешно сдал экзамен Oracle Java 8 OCA.


4. После интенсивной подготовки к интервью получил место разработчика на внешнем проекте. Стек примерно такой: Java 6, Spring, Hibernate, JSP, Liquibase, OracleDB, Maven. Здесь я сейчас и работаю.


5. Спектр задач довольно широкий — от написания скрипта по обновлению структуры БД (Oracle) и изменения верстки JSP для отображения новых полей, до создания новых сущностей и создания DTO для «протаскивания» новых полей на отображение со слоя DAO.

Послесловие

I would like to thank the project team for helping to lay a solid practical foundation for my career. This foundation helped me in a short time to go through a difficult and winding path from “ junior ” to “just” developer. And on the way from one point to another, I repeatedly returned to the course to once again look through this or that topic. What helped me in mastering technology was that in the second half of the course there were a lot of lectures in which it was constantly drilled into me that I needed to use Google and any sources of information (books, video tutorials). The ability to “ squeeze ” information is a key skill to grow professionally in the field of software development. PS : Despite the fact that I myself got a job after 20- odd levels of the course, if you have such an opportunity, don’t do it! Because the 3 months of the probationary period turned out to be one big stress for me. The first step was to learn Git in a couple of weekends, and constantly had to fill knowledge gaps. In this regard, I continued to take the JavaRush course until victory. So taking the course completely and then getting a job is a much more sensible idea. But my path was more winding.