10 Things a Java Developer Should Learn These Days

We are halfway into the year and, looking back at what the last 2 years of the COVID-19 pandemic left us, we can say that the advancements on technology and all the different languages, frameworks and development tools have not disappointed us and even in many cases have overtaken us. It doesn’t seem that long since Java 8 was released more than 8 years ago and, although it is true that today the latest version is Java 18, we must remember that there are still many companies stuck with Java 8 and even a few with Java 1.4 a 1.6 and a few other legacy frameworks.

Because of this great advance in programming languages and frameworks in recent years, many programmers could feel overwhelmed due to the large number of updates that we are exposed to in our industry. However, we have begun to see very marked patterns in different industries, and we believe it is important to mention what are the 10 things that every Java programmer should learn.

1. Java 8-18. As mentioned before, for many companies, Java 8 is still a priority but soon they will face an important transition to newer versions of Java. Those new versions make enhancements in the garbage collector treatment improving the memory performance which is a win-win deal when talking about high volume systems
2. Spring Boot 2.7.1, yes! Spring Boot also have a new release and at least you should have enough knowledge on Spring Boot v2.0, which will enable you to be a fit in multiple projects implementing microservices architectures.
3. DevOps tools. You should be familiar with at least 1 tool from each of the phases of the DevOps lifecycle
4. Cloud Platforms. Amazon Web Service (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP) or Microsoft Azure. You don’t need to learn all of them. in fact, learning one of them means you will have a fair idea about the others
5. Apache Spark and Kafka. Big Data is probably one of the hottest technologies at this moment, and Apache Spark and Kafka are 2 frameworks that will make you have a better idea on how to implement big Data technologies and their advantages
6. Spring frameworks. They will give you solid bases on Dependency Injection and security modules like Oath2
7. Unit testing. Yes, it is true there are a lot of new frameworks for Unit Testing. However, Junit and Mockito are more often utilized in many projects and clients. Learning how to test your own code will enhance your coding skills very quickly
8. Restful webservices and Microservices. Learning Restful webservices concepts and frameworks such as JAX-RS and Spring Boot, will make things easier for you on the backend implementations. Microservices main objective being to break up your code into small, distributed, and independent services for better development, deployment, and management
9. JPA and ORM. Hibernate or Apache Ibatis. Java Persistent APIs and ORM tools will help you in backend projects to communicate your services with Persistent layers like Databases.
10. Frontend frameworks. Learning some frontend frameworks such as JavaScript, React, or Angular, will help us opening to more opportunities on projects looking for Full Stack developer skillsets

A simple way to start training yourself on these technologies is through courses that are available on paid platforms like Udemy, Pluralsight, etc. You can also get this knowledge through free resources available on YouTube and blogs that fit the seniority we have in each of these technologies. Each new technology learned will add an important skillset to your career path that will guide you towards success on the IT programming industry.