Update #7 Am I doing the right thing?

The other day I was talking about my Java challenge with one of the (sr) Java developers in my team. I told him that I was currently learning topics like Java Generics and Access Modifiers. His reaction caused me some concern.

He explained that these indeed are topics that Java developers learn and know, but in practice you do not really “use” them. In the daily work you mostly implement known design patterns, which you bootstrap with more or less stand Java coding blocks. And most of the time standard libraries like Spring(-Boot) also take away complexity from using Java standard functionality.

So, should I stop learning the details of Java and more focus on general Java, design patterns and Spring?

After some consideration I still think I am on the right track, at least for the way learning works for me. If I understand the underlying details, it is (for me) much easier to also get a good grasp of how the libraries work, and also why they are so useful and powerful.

Funny enough I also had a discussion with the same developer after a job-interview with a candidate developer for our team. We declined the candidate for a few reasons, one of the (more minor) ones was that we had the feeling that he knew quite well how to use Spring Boot, but he insufficient knowledge how to solve problems in plain old java if needed.

Finally a status update. I guess I am now near to 50%, although it does not feel like it. Just finished Java Generics and now in the section on Naming Conventions and Packages, Static and Final Keywords