[ajug-members] cert.

[Alan Honeycutt]

>
> Experienced programmers: Is java difficult to people who have programmed
> for 5+ years with some sort of procedural-language and then move to java?
>
In 2000, I moved from a C/assembly job to a Java position (having never
written a line of Java) and had no trouble making the transition.  I feel
that most of the knowledge that took me from my early level of "competent"
to "good" (which probably took a couple of years) didn't actually have much
to do with Java syntax.  In the beginning, you can always google whatever
you're trying to do (i.e. "java sort"), so memorizing the libraries isn't
something I'd worry about.  Honestly, there's just too much out there to
remember it all.  In addition to the stuff that comes with the JDK, you'll
use many open source utilities like Apache Commons in real world Java apps.
Just write as much Java code as you can and you'll eventually memorize the
things that you commonly use.

If you want to become a truly useful Java developer, I'd recommend learning
the basics of OO and JUnit (unit testing), getting comfortable with a good
IDE (I use Eclipse), and focusing on writing human-readable code.  That's
going to put you ahead of the majority of people with whom I've ever
worked.  There are plenty of good books out there, but I found Robert
Martin's /Agile Software Development, Principles, Patterns, and Practices/
really made a lot of sense to me WRT some of the non-syntaxy stuff that I'm
talking about.
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