Java: how long to being able to work as part of team? Resource to make that happen?

2    03 Sep 2016 18:06 by u/WhiteRonin

I'm a long time PHP programmer and know Laravel pretty well. But to be honest, salary and job availability just don't match Java.

So, I'm thinking about going Java.

How long would it take for me to come up to speed to be able to work for a company?

And, is code academy a good resource to start with or do you have better recommendations to start with?

Thanks!

6 comments

1 u/Stavon 03 Sep 2016 18:17

It depends only on your coding skills. Java and PHP are similar in many ways, if you know how to code the change isn't hard. But If you only know hoe to PHP, it will be hard.

I never tried codeacademy, but some experience in it or in project Euler can show your skills to an employer. Contributions to open source projects work the same way.

0 u/WhiteRonin [OP] 03 Sep 2016 20:26

I've been contributing to open source for years. I'm a LAMP stack person with almost zero js skills.

Could you expand on what you meant by knowing only PHP would be hard?

Thanks for the heads up for Euler.

1 u/Stavon 05 Sep 2016 16:39

I mostly meant for finding a job. It's easy to build something with PHP without much coding skill, so there are lot's of PHP programmers with little skill and many companies avoid PHP only programmer or even PHP at all. Java is still widely used in business applications, causing demand in programmers.

Knowing multiple programming languages also shows you know the concepts, not just the language.

0 u/WhiteRonin [OP] 05 Sep 2016 18:15

Ah, thanks. That does make sense.

I agree about throwing stuff together with PHP.

1 u/CrazyGrape 03 Sep 2016 18:29

Codecademy is pretty good, but not very extensive. It should definitely help if you are just starting out, though. One of the resources I have used and would recommend is TheNewBoston.

0 u/WhiteRonin [OP] 03 Sep 2016 20:24

Is the new Boston a better place to learn Java?