97 Things Every Java Programmer Should Know

Chapter 45. Keep Your Finger on the Pulse

Trisha Gee

I learned Java version 1.1 at university (I wish this was because my university was using old technology instead of it being because I’m old). At that time Java was small enough, and I was naïve enough, that it was possible to believe I had learned all the Java I needed to know, and that I was set for life as a Java programmer.

During my first job, while I was still at university and had been using Java for less than a year, Java 1.2 was released. It had an entirely different user interface (UI) library, called Swing, so I spent that summer learning Swing in order to use it to provide our users with a better experience.

A couple of years later, in my first job as a graduate, I discovered that applets were out and servlets were in. I spent the next six months learning about servlets and JSPs so we could give our users an online registration form.

In my next job, I found out that apparently we didn’t use Vector any more—we used ArrayList. This shook me to my core. How can the very fundamentals of the language, the data structures themselves, be changing underneath me? My first two discoveries involved learning additions to the language. This third one was about changes to things I thought I already knew. If I wasn’t at university anymore being taught things, how was I supposed to just know this stuff?

I was fortunate in those ...