Java questions which don't deserve their own thread, yet.

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The Cavern of COBOL > Java questions which don't deserve their own thread, yet.

Safe and Secure!: Jun 14, 2008; OFFICIAL SA THREAD RUINER
SPRING 2013

Any good books on Java? I've been using Java off and on, mostly for school projects, for almost seven years now, so I'm extremely comfortable with it, but I want to make sure I'm familiar with all the basic things you would expect someone with a lot of experience to familiar with it. Essentially, I want to get rid of any holes in my knowledge that I'm not aware.

I saw Effective Java, but that seems more like an "advanced" book, rather than a book that will make sure I know basic language stuff like "there are four levels of class access, public, private, protected, and package-protected."

Effective Java is certainly on my list of books to read, but it's not really the book I'm looking for here.

# ¿ Jul 6, 2012 01:35

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# ¿ May 21, 2024 01:57

Safe and Secure!: Jun 14, 2008; OFFICIAL SA THREAD RUINER
SPRING 2013

Alrighty. I'll just read that instead. Thanks!

# ¿ Jul 6, 2012 02:47

Safe and Secure!: Jun 14, 2008; OFFICIAL SA THREAD RUINER
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Let's say that I claimed in an interview that I was a Java wizard, and this set my interviewer off on a mission to ask me increasingly difficult questions about Java to if I was lying. What kinds of questions/topics would I be asked about?

Out of all the languages I've used, I've got by far the most experience and am most comfortable in Java, so I figured that it would be best to focus on improving the area I'm good at if I want to get the best job I can when I graduate this Spring. What knowledge separates good, highly-experienced Java-using software engineers from the rest?

# ¿ Jul 28, 2012 15:30

Safe and Secure!: Jun 14, 2008; OFFICIAL SA THREAD RUINER
SPRING 2013

Did not know about weak references. Or soft or phantom references. Weak references sound extremely useful if you're doing a lot of work with Collections. I don't understand how a senior developer wouldn't be using them, or why I'm just hearing about them now. Thanks!

Safe and Secure! fucked around with this message at 02:25 on Jul 29, 2012

# ¿ Jul 29, 2012 02:10

Safe and Secure!: Jun 14, 2008; OFFICIAL SA THREAD RUINER
SPRING 2013

I was excited for Java 7 until I found that we still wouldn't be getting real closures.

# ¿ Jul 30, 2012 11:55

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I just want to do whatever will look best on my resume for a couple of years before I run off to teach English in some other country for a couple years, so that I can find a job when I get back.

# ¿ Jul 31, 2012 02:46

Safe and Secure!: Jun 14, 2008; OFFICIAL SA THREAD RUINER
SPRING 2013

While we're on the topic, any favorite Java mock libraries?

# ¿ Aug 22, 2012 11:18

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Is there anything like RSpec or Jasmine for Java? All the BDD testing stuff I'm finding is for acceptance testing, which is definitely not what I'm looking for. I just want something that makes my unit tests a little more human-readable.

# ¿ May 9, 2013 01:57

Safe and Secure!: Jun 14, 2008; OFFICIAL SA THREAD RUINER
SPRING 2013

RockyB posted:

Not quite what you're looking for, but if you aren't using it already the FEST fluent assertions interface makes stuff a lot more readable: https://github.com/alexruiz/fest-assert-2.x/wiki

This is pretty much exactly the sort of thing I was looking for. Thank you!

# ¿ May 10, 2013 19:47

Safe and Secure!: Jun 14, 2008; OFFICIAL SA THREAD RUINER
SPRING 2013

Neat, I've never heard of persistence in data structures before. Are persistent data structures commonly used in concurrent applications?

# ¿ May 18, 2013 20:43

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Yeah, the most that I ever got learning about the JVM through school is when my professor spent a few minutes comparing Java bytecode to x86 assembly in our assembly class.

# ¿ Jul 12, 2013 03:30

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So what is "modern" Java web development like? It's all enterprise stuff, right? And JSP is considered ancient, as is the slightly more recent JSF? I guess Spring is where modern, enterprise Java development is at, but isn't that just a dependency injection framework with a lovely MVC module available if you hate yourself? Never used Spring, that's just the impression I got from when I was looking for a Java web framework a while ago before I said "gently caress it" and decided I'd rather have some fun with Scala.

# ¿ Jan 12, 2014 17:01

Safe and Secure!: Jun 14, 2008; OFFICIAL SA THREAD RUINER
SPRING 2013

I want to know how the JVM works, especially garbage collection. I've been going through the JVM spec, but it looks like the way garbage collection works depends on the specific implementation. So is there a single implementation I can take to be mostly canonical? Like, if I learn how Oracle's implementation works, and then maybe how the JVM used by Android works, then that's enough? What would I even want to Google here to find specific information on both of those implementations work?

# ¿ Aug 11, 2014 04:41

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SPRING 2013

Dijkstracula posted:

Depending on how much language runtime knowledge you have, you might want to work up to OpenJDK-specific stuff by starting with the JRockit book, which does a great job of covering the fundamentals of stuff like JIT compilers, generational GCs, etc.

Sadly, there used to be a lot of great Sun blogs about OpenJDK internals but the Oracle rebranding means most URLs are dead ends. After the above, I'd actually recommend Charlie Hunt's Java performance book, as it's pretty tightly coupled to OpenJDK and gives a pretty solid informal description of the major GCs (the Parallel collector, CMS, and G1).

After that, frankly, the source is pretty readable and that's where I'd point you to next (modulo C2, the server compiler, which is straight-up )

edit: forgot to mention that if you're interested in a denser, GC-specific read that isn't tied to any particular runtime, you can't go better than The Garbage Collection Handbook.

Was there anything in particular you were interested in? Up until recently I was paid to hack on OpenJDK so I can probably point you in the right direction if you can't find what you're after.

Thank you for this!

I don't have anything in particular that I want to know, I just feel that I don't understand my tools as much as I'd like to.

# ¿ Aug 18, 2014 02:55

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# ¿ May 21, 2024 01:57

Safe and Secure!: Jun 14, 2008; OFFICIAL SA THREAD RUINER
SPRING 2013

code:

public class Account {

	private static double annualInterestRate;
	private static int id;
	private static double balance;
	private static Date dateCreated;

Why did you make these fields static? If someone asked you, and you couldn't look it up, how would you explain hat the static keyword does? It would be helpful to find out what it does, but it might also be helpful to check what you think it does so we can tell you the appropriate way to do what you want it to do.

# ¿ Dec 8, 2014 01:11

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The Cavern of COBOL > Java questions which don't deserve their own thread, yet.