Keep Your Finger on the Pulse

I learned Java version 1.1 at university (I wish this was because my university was using old technology instead of it being because I’m old). At that time Java was small enough, and I was naïve enough, that it was possible to believe I had learned all the Java I needed to know, and that I was set for life as a Java programmer.

During my first job, while I was still at university and had been using Java for less than a year, Java 1.2 was released. It had an entirely different UI library, called Swing, so I spent that summer learning Swing in order to use it to provide our users with a better experience.

A couple of years later in my first job as a graduate, I discovered that applets were out and Servlets were in. I spent the next six months learning about Servlets and JSPs so we could give our users an online registration form.

In my next job, I found out that apparently we didn’t use Vector any more — we used ArrayList. This shook me to my core. How can the very fundamentals of the language, the data structures themselves, be changing underneath me? My first two discoveries involved learning additions to the language. This third one was about changes to things I thought I already knew. If I wasn’t at university anymore being taught things, how was I supposed to just know this stuff?

I was fortunate in those early jobs to have people around me who were aware of the technology changes that impacted the Java projects I worked on. That should be the role of senior team members — not simply to do what they’re told, but to make suggestions on how to do it and to help the rest of the team improve too.

To survive as a Java programmer you need to accept that Java is not a stationary language. It evolves, not only into new versions, but as libraries, frameworks, and even new JVM languages. At first this can be intimidating and overwhelming. But staying up to date doesn’t mean you have to learn everything that’s out there — it just means keeping your finger on the pulse, listening for common keywords, and understanding technology trends. You only need to drill down deeper when it’s relevant for your job or when it’s something that’s personally interesting to you (or ideally both).

Knowing what’s available in the current version of Java and what is planned for upcoming ones can help you implement features or functionality that will help your users do what they need to do. Which means it helps you as a developer be more productive. Java now releases a new version every six months. Keeping your finger on that pulse can actually make your life easier.