Java as a career

Most of the articles published so far are for developers with strong foundation on Java. However, from the precious feedbacks we received, there are people with little or no industry experience that also want to pick up Java on their own and start programming career. This is very interesting and we truly believe that everyone can learn programming on our own.

To make this blog more useful for beginner, from today, we will start to write more articles introducing basic concept and skills of Java programming. We also want to share some thoughts on what factors define a success career in in this field.

Who should take Programming as a career

From my own experience, programming career is rewarding if and only if coding is fun. If you find coding boring in school time then better do not give it a try, and even if you try the chance of progressing far is very limited. I have seen some brilliant people lagging behind in this career as concepts and technologies getting obsoleted too fast. However, if look at the positive side, working on the same technologies and concepts over 30 years is boring to dead. So, judge your self and choose a career that make your life more interesting. You may want to live, not merely exist.

Programming is fun because you are solving problem, figuring out solutions and exploring new ideas all the time. It is even better that you do not need to compromise your living standard to pursue a meaningful life when become a developer. The key point for a successful career is to set the expectation right. If you allow yourself to be a mediocre programmer, life will be tough. So, don't be mediocre, it is not fun at all competing at the bottom of the market. Dream big and always aim to be the best of all. Life will reward your efforts.

How much effort it take to be good at Programming

It depend on the how much effort you put in to self-training and also the works that you are exposed to. Generally, it should not take more effort than getting a decent degree, and it is much more useful in life. The tricky part is there is no the end where you can collect a certificate, claim your self to be an awesome developer and take a rest. Choosing this career means endless loop of picking up new concept and learning new skills.

In personal experiences, from graduation time until now, my knowledge slowly improve, but I still have more things that I do not know than what I know. However, you do not need to know everything in the world to be good at your daily work. As long as you understand fundamentals well, technologies should not be too tough to pick up, when you need it.

How to make use of this blog

We will not try to teach basic Java or to explain any basic Java concept like Object Oriented Programming, Polymorphism, Garbage Collection... They are kind of things that being taught in school and we cannot do it any better. If you happen to be not graduated from an IT school, download an online Java course and pick it up on your own. In this blog, we only cover what cannot be learnt in school but essential on daily work of a developer.

We hope the content we share here will be useful and bring fun for experienced developers as well as beginners. We also strongly suggest beginners to pick up industry skills even before graduation. Having broad view of major technologies and concepts in industry may greatly boost your chance of landing a perfect job.