How to become a Java programmer

In this article I will explain what one must do to be able to get a job as a java programmer. The article is based on an Email I sent in the past to someone who was aspiring to become a java programmer.

In order to make a good chance of landing a job as a java programmer or java trainee you will need to show the company where you want to work that you know the basics of the Java programming language. You do this by passing the OCA exam. OCA stands for Oracle Certified Associate and its a certificate issued by Oracle (the inventor company of the programming language Java). This certificate is therefore recognized all over the world. So you could also look for a job in France or USA with this certificate for example.

The book you'll need to prepare for the OCA exam is this one. https://www.amazon.com/OCA-Certified-Associate-Programmer-1Z0-808/dp/1118957407
There are others out there but this is the one I used. It has 3 custom practice exams with questions that mimic the real questions on the actual exam, which will contain around 80 questions and you'll have 2 and a half hours to complete. I woulden't recommend sticking with just those 3 practice exams though. There is another tool you can use which greatly increases your chances of passing. That tool is Enthuware: http://www.enthuware.com/index.php/ocajp-8-average-scores
In this link you can see the average mock exam scores of people who did the mock exams, and the average score of those people on the real exam, which is allot higher.

The reason why the score on the mock exams is lower then on the real exam is because they deliberately give you harder questions to answer on the mock exams. If you are able to pass those mock exams with a sufficient score then passing the real exam will be very easy for you! Any score above 65% is considered sufficient by Oracle. I got an 85% score and I think the enthuware mock exams really helped me allot with achieving this score. You can download the trial or full version here.
http://www.enthuware.com/index.php/mock-exams/oracle-certified-associate/java-oca-certification-8 The most recent version of Java is Java 8 at the moment, but a collegue told me that in January 2018 Oracle will release a preliminary version of Java 9 which will be followed by the release of a final version 6 months or so later. So if you can wait then I would wait for java 9, but if you want to start getting a certificate now then you can also just learn for the java 8 exam. Java 9 will be nothing more then java 8 + some added new features, the main language will be the same and you will not be forced to use the new features that java 9 offers. But it can be handy to understand them at some point because other programmers could be using those new features.

In order to take the exam you will have to buy an exam voucher for the exam which will cost you 212 euro's and it allows you to take the exam once. You can buy the voucher on oracle.com.
https://education.oracle.com/pls/web_prod-plq-dad/db_pages.getpage?page_id=5001&get_params=p_exam_id:1Z0-808
Make sure you choose the English version because there is also a Japanese exam version available.

Once you've got your OCA certificate you could study to get your OCP certificate. OCP stands for Oracle Certified Professional. After OCP comes OCE (oracle certified expert), but most companies will not ask for you to get your OCE certificate. OCP deepens your knowledge of java to a sufficient enough level for most companies. But I woulden't think about OCP for now, OCA should be your goal (you cant do the OCP exam without having the OCA certificate anyway). Once you have OCA you can apply for a job at a big company and once you've settled there they can pay for your OCP exam and study material.

Next to getting your OCA you should try to get as much experience in java programming as possible. Experience could be achieved by practicing with practice assignments but doing small freelance jobs for companies would be preferable because you can put that on your resumé as real work experience. For experience through practice assignments and to broaden your java knowledge even further I can really recommend this book: Introduction to Java Programming Comprehensive Version. The author is Y. Daniel Lang. This book has 1339 pages or so and explains most things there are to know about Java. The examples in the OCA study guide are very very summary so I can really recommend you to buy this book as well and to practice by doing the assignments of each chapter. It has easy assignments but also very hard assignments, whichever you prefer. If the explanation offered isen't sufficient enough you can also post your question on www.stackoverflow.com. This is a very big website for programmers, it has allot of experts answering questions.

Next to learning java you will need to learn about building and maintaining databases because most companies work with databases (like a store that has a database full of client data and the products they've purchased for example). The java programs that you build can communicate with a database by using the language SQL. So you should learn a bit about SQL as well.

Finally, there are Frameworks out there that make communicating with databases easier. Knowledge of frameworks that are in high demand now-a-days are Hibernate and Spring.
http://spring.io/ and http://hibernate.org/. Both frameworks make programming something allot easier or faster by reducing the required lines of code that you have to write in order to get the same thing done. Spring is not only for databases, it can be used for WebApplications as well. But this is something you should learn about after the basics. for now its important that you get your OCA first.

Once you have gotten your OCA certificate and practiced a bit with Java you can already start looking for a job. You should be looking for a traineeship at a big IT company because they can develop you further and teach you about Hibernate, Spring, databases etc etc. Traineeships usually last 8 weeks and are full time (40 hours a week). After that they will put you on an assignment for a client together with other junior and senior java developers. You will receive a salary during those 8 weeks and after so in essence you get paid to learn. You will also get your own mobile phone and your own worklaptop when you get a job at a big IT company. The salary range for a junior java developer with 0 years experience is 2000 to 2500 euro's (fulltime). Here is a list of big IT company's you can try.

CGI
ilionx https://www.ilionx.com/nl (great traineeship, they will send you to India with other trainees to study Java there.)
Sogeti (also great if you like to travel, part of the traineeship will be on a university in America)
Ordina
Atos origin
Quintor (smaller IT company)
IBM
There are many others!

If you want to practice with Java comfortably I can recommend you to download an IDE (integrated development environment) or else you will have to work with the windows cmd commandline.
There are many free IDE's like Eclipse, NetBeans etc but I can recommend you to use Intellij. It is the most versatile IDE available. It works well with JavaFX scene builder. Its a tool to easily make a GUI for your program (you can simply draw the buttons and textfields on your Stage instead of having to program the position and properties of every button on it. It will save you allot of time).

Hope this helps anyone! 😊