| After learning SQL, Powershell, VB script, and taking a fifteen week CIS course on Android; Java was a natural segway for me. I work an an Android use case, so reading Java stacktraces, and code commits became a valuable skill. Then, I learned the value of using Java libraries such as Appium and Selenium for end-to-end integration, performance, and reliability testing. Then I started using Java libraries like Okhttp, Jackson to build fancier test setups. While this was happening, I was learning the value of writing code that could be ran in containers - which Java does. Now I can create microservices that I stick in containers on Google Cloud Run or Pivotal Cloud Foundry - and pass arguments to execute tasks. After getting these foundational skills developed, I started working on adding features to Android apps in the use case. Since I had learned that much, I figured I should write a personal site using Spring MVC, Spring JPA, VueJS, ChartJS, and CockroachCloud (postgres). I then went and wrote a DAO microservice to write to CockroachCloud on a recurring schedule, and used Java with JDBC to learn how to access postgres without Spring. Java has become a great skill, that I picked up almost entirely during the pandemic. Especially when paired with Javascript. On Javascript, what I find interesting is that some teams have rewrote services from Javascript to Java. IME, Java works on everything, and with everything. Once you master one object oriented language, having to learn Objective-C or another variant of Java like Kotlin or Scala becomes that much easier. IMO, there are 3 things are worth learning. They are SQL, a high level scripting language, and a object oriented language. They all have their uses, and the skills are transferable. For me, Java just happened to be the most valuable skill I could learn. |