Top Java Developers Offer Advice to Students

Got Advice for Students?

A very good java.sun.com article
(http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/Interviews/studentdevs/i...)
has 11 leading Java developers -- from Joshua Bloch to Tor Norbye to Chet Haase -- offering advice about how to become better developers. It's very useful if you're trying to figure out how to make it as a Java developer.

Here's a brief sampling:

Josh Bloch:

"Write lots of code. Have fun with it! Collaborate with people who are more experienced than you and learn from them. Join an open source project. Code reviews are a great way to learn."

Tor Norbye:

"Learn to use your tools. And I don't mean just enough to get by. I mean really learn how to use your tools. Become an expert user..."

... Learn how to make trade-offs....

... Finally, learn the platform APIs."

Chet Haase:

"Take the math courses you need. It doesn't need to be higher-level stuff, but I've leaned heavily on linear algebra and some amount of calculus for a lot of what I've done."

Rags Srinivas:

"Don't be overwhelmed by the language or the platform. If you break it down, the basics of the language are based on object-oriented programming, threading, concurrency, and event-driven programming. It's necessary to become a master of these concepts since the rest of your career will depend on this foundation. "

It's worth checking out.