How to Improve Coding Skills in Java

Java is the developer's first choice to write code. It is a very popular and successful programming language to build applications. The count of the Java developer is increased day by day. It is mostly used to develop web and mobile applications. In order to become a successful Java developer, we have to improve our coding skills. Getting basics knowledge of any language is not enough.

Only by reading books and learning the basics of Java we cannot improve our coding skills. We have to do the following things regularly for that:

Clear all the basics

We first have to clear our basics of Java. We should have basic knowledge of Java for further constructing the Java skills. We should have to take the help of the sources like YouTube videos, books, or other study material for that. There is no need to get everything at once, understand concepts and code slowly, and then we can gradually pick up speed.

We should have knowledge of the following concept of Java:

• Java versions
• Basics of Java like data types, variable and oops concept.
• Spring Framework
• Design Patterns
• Testing tools for unit testing
• APIs and Libraries
• Microservices
• Kotlin
• JVM's Internals
• DevOps Tools
• IDEs

Coding, Coding and Coding

Coding is everything in Java or any other programming language. We can put the code at the top of the list because it is a very difficult and essential part of the programming. There are several concepts like multi-threading and exception handling, which are theoretically easy to understand, but we cannot understand their actual working without writing code for it. There is only one way to find out the mistakes in error handling, designing and threading, i.e., Coding. It helps us to identify the issue related to the:

1. Designing
2. Output
3. Threading
4. Address
5. Error handling
6. Missing requirements
7. Designing

Reading books and watching online videos

Books and online videos are the sources that help us to improve our coding skills. We are done with the coding section, and we know that the code is the central piece of programming. Our code can be good or bad, and to identify that books and videos are best. There are several books available that guide us to solve the issues in our code. Like books, online videos are also helpful in finding the error in our code and improving programming skills.

Practicing Data Structure, Algorithms, and Design related problems

In Java programming, the most critical things are Data Structure, Design, and Algorithms. We should have to do the practice all these three things regularly and solve problems related to them. In problem-solving, solid knowledge of data structure plays an important role because the data structure is a key piece of any program.

In the same way, knowledge of key programming principles, search and sort algorithms, and other well-known algorithms help us to improve the coding skills in Java. Several books, tutorials, and videos are available in the market related to them, which help us make ourselves expert.

Reading Code

There is another important thing, i.e., Reading Code, which help us to improve our coding skills. Reading the code is more difficult in comparison to reading the blog. We should have to get the code of our fellow programmers, Java SDK code, code of open source project or our proprietary code, and by reading the code, try to find the answer to the following questions:

1. How the code is working on the project?
2. What the code is doing in the project?
3. Why the code is doing that in the project?

After that, we need to find patterns and develop navigation skills. It is very boring and difficult, but it will be very easy with time and have a good code sense. It will alert us when we make mistakes and also help us to understand others' mistakes.

Understand unit tests

Testing is one of the important parts of the development of the application. Unit testing plays an important role in testing Java applications. JUnit is one of the important tools for it. Like Coding and designing, unit testing is a bit more complex for beginners or average programmers. The unit test helps a lot in improving better names, abstraction, interfaces, abstract class design and overall code quality. So, writing unit tests for Java applications is also very important for improving coding skills.

JUnit and Mockito are the two essential testing framework to perform the unit test of the Java application.

Code Reviews

Code reviews are another thing that is very helpful to improve our coding skills. Code Review is a development practice which helps us to become a good programmer. Code review often helps that the code we think is rock solid and has some bugs that only other programmers can see, Code Review does it for us.

If we get a chance to work in that company that performs unit testing and has code review as a discipline, then we are very lucky. In that case, we are likely to be a better programmer than the rest. Unit testing and Code reviews are the two things that help us to improve our coding skills.

Work on projects

The best way to improve our coding skills is to start working on projects. We can start working as a freelancer too for improving coding skills. When we work on the live project, we face several issues. In order to solve them, we need to figure out the place where the problem was raised, and sometimes we also need to take the help of books, online videos and our fellow programmers. In that way, working on a live project is the best way to improve coding skills.

Fellow programmer

Talking to fellow programmers and discussing code with him is the best way to improve coding skills. Our mind tends to involve more when we talk and listen to others. We can often not see the issue and problem in our code, and when we discuss it with our teammates, we find gaps, missing requirements, bugs, and design flaws.

Programming is not just sitting and code. We need to talk, listen, and hang out with fellow programmers. Participating in events is also very helpful to improve coding skills.

Dedicate yourself

Dedication is the most important thing to learn any programming language or to improve coding skills. This is the last thing which we need to do because if we don't have dedication, we can learn or improve anything. We'll only be a good java programmer if we truly dedicate ourselves to it.

All the things which we discussed above help us a lot to improve our coding skills. However, the last thing, i.e., dedicate yourself, is required to follow all the remaining things.