Category Courses

Just a mini update (without a READ MORE) this time. As the title says, I am still very motivated to finish this course. But is not easy to find enough time. Last weeks were hectic at work due to the preparation of our quarterly planning event. And even in the quarterly hack week I had only little time for my Java journey as I joined other trainings and organised a (JIRA) training of my own.

For the 2nd time this month my blog was down a few days without me noticing. This time because my (external USB) backup drive was full. Not sure what happened, as I thought older backups were automatically removed. Have to keep a better eye on this and find out how Proxmox handles this exactly. And I was thinking, probably first thing I have to develop when I am a little bit more advanced in Java, is a simple “host monitor” script: Hit https://adeknegt.nl and check if there is 200 response code. Suppose this is dead simple with Spring, but maybe it is doable too with plain old Java. I still have the networking chapter to go in the course.

Finally, I am now in the middle of the 6.5 hours chapter on collections (sets, maps and some assorted extra’s). I feel it is really important to learn this part well, as in almost all programs you use them extensively. Now at 47% of the course (not sure how they measure this, maybe just a count of videos + exercises). On to the next 53%!

(I don’t feel like celebrating post #10, maybe a big party at #25 or so)

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?

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Again a short update. Since last update, I am now in the last part of Section 9. This section is about Interface, Inner- and Abstract classes. Not too difficult, but doing every challenge yourself really takes time. But I learn a lot from doing it myself every time, so I keep at it.

Why a short update? Well, as said I do this course beside my work and my social life. And especially work is really busy. Last week I helped organise the first ‘hackweek’ of my newly formed department. A hackweek is a full week dedicated for Learning and R&D. So you can do a personal training on a topic of your interest, organise a hackaton, share knowledge with colleagues etc… I am really happy KLM allows for a lot of time for Learning and R&D, not only on paper but also with initiatives like the hackweek.

Another busy topic at work is the monthly PI planning next week (if you are interested: https://www.scaledagileframework.com/pi-planning/). This always takes substantial time to prepare and assure that it runs smoothly.

The result: with some other personal and social obligations (a funeral, weekly tennis, theatre, band practice), there was not much time to focus on my road to Java greatness. More and more I have to conclude I am really doing like a school class (not a Java class). I have to accept it will take considerate effort and lead-time to finish it. I am still persistent and convinced I will make it to the end, but it will take for sure several more months. Now up to finishing section 9 and then section 10 about Java Generics 🙂

The title is a poor word joke, as I am finishing up on chapter 8 with Arrays, Lists, ArrayList and LinkedList. Not too complex I think, although the LinkedList has some quirks for sure. I do get how it works in code, but I am not sure yet why you need a separate iterator to be able to iterate through the elements. Well, I probably have to practice some more to get used to it.

Not much to say about lists, so maybe a small update on the course and the learning experience. I still like the structured manner the topics are presented. What I do see now: doing the challenges yourself before checking out the solution is maybe one of the most valuable parts. I am still somewhat frustrated that the teacher often has another take on the solution, but usually there is a lot to learn on how to efficiently solve certain standard problems.

Earlier I was positive about the exercises, for which you have to copy your code to the website where it runs and checks the output. I am less positive now. In last chapters the challenges were quite large (several videos), but at the exercise it turns out the you almost literally have to create the code from the challenge. That is not much of an exercise.

Anyway, still like the learning and the (almost) daily progress I make. Next Topic: Inner- and Abstract Classes & Interfaces.

There are several ways to learn a programming language. If done as part of education or job, you will probably go to a professional training. With a group of (mostly) motivated participants in face2face full day training sessions for several weeks or months.

From the start it was clear this wasn’t the way to go for me. Programming in Java is not my job, so I will do it mainly in my own time, when social life permits. I really need to chew the monster in little parts. Considering this, for me two main options remained:

1. Make my own course collecting tutorials and primers available online
2. Follow an online commercial “Java start-to-end” course

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