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JAVA SE6 or SE7?

  • 26-01-2015 2:36pm
    #1
    bambera
    Registered Users Posts: 356 ✭✭


    Hi,

    I've been given the option to either do a FAS classroom based course in JAVA programming with an SE6 exam at the end or an online course in JAVA associate developer with an SE7 exam at the end.

    Is the SE7 just for more advanced users or is it a different thing altogether?

    I only start looking at Java programming at the start of this month and I'm a total newbie in computer languages.

    Anyone had experience doing either course?


Comments

  • #2
    cython
    Registered Users Posts: 4,757 ✭✭✭cython


    Java SE7 is a later release/standard in the language than SE 6. Each new major release of Java tends to expand the feature set, as you can see from the preceding two links. For the most part if you can do something in Java version X, it will be supported in Java X+1, but something from Java X may not work in Java X-1. The latest Java version is SE 8 as far as I recall, but it will take time for that to gain traction.

    Some may disagree (e.g. those with experience of either course), but if you are new to Java and to programming as a whole, I would suggest you go for the classroom based course, as you might have greater chance to ask questions if you get stumped or have issues in grasping any concepts. In addition, if you are looking for a job out of this at the end, depending on the market you are looking at you may not actually be able to use the distinction between 6 and 7 - I work in a company supplying enterprise software to banks, and they are not the fastest moving of organisations when it comes to technology - we do our main development on Java 6 because this is the latest version many of them will have installed.

    All of this is from my limited experience though, so others may, as mentioned, have contrasting opinions.


  • #3
    bambera
    Registered Users Posts: 356 ✭✭bambera


    Thanks cython,

    That's exactly the info I needed!

    I have been following the Stanford University Programming Methodology course on line to date but would make life easier if I had someone in front of me to ask questions that can be answered straight away.

    Thanks again :)


  • #4
    Anesthetize
    Registered Users Posts: 1,459 ✭✭✭Anesthetize


    I'd definitely recommend the classroom-based course even though it is Java SE 6. It would be better learning for someone who is new to programming languages and would be better in terms of getting the basics of the Java language nailed down and actually leaning how to code. After that course you could read up on the extra features in SE 7 and do your Oracle Associate exam at a later stage.


  • #5
    EamonnDunne
    Registered Users Posts: 50 ✭✭EamonnDunne


    It should be noted that Java 7 is being phased out. As mentioned above people are generally extremely slow to migrate, even though the JDK has always done an awesome job of backward compatibility.

    Java 7 won't receive any more public updates after April. However when just starting out this has a very low chance of impacting any of your study.


  • #6
    bambera
    Registered Users Posts: 356 ✭✭bambera


    Thanks guys.

    One more question.
    I just want to get an idea what the course of progression would be.
    If I were to do the course and pass the exam (SE6) what would generally be the next step from there?
    Would people normally do more courses or do any company's take on newbies that have only this certification behind them?


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  • #7
    cython
    Registered Users Posts: 4,757 ✭✭✭cython


    EamonnDunne wrote: »
    It should be noted that Java 7 is being phased out. As mentioned above people are generally extremely slow to migrate, even though the JDK has always done an awesome job of backward compatibility.

    Java 7 won't receive any more public updates after April. However when just starting out this has a very low chance of impacting any of your study.

    To be fair, Java 6 hasn't received public updates in almost 2 years either, but it's still a very widely used platform. For example, at the enterprise level, IBM WebSphere still does not seem to support Java 8 and Oracle (the Java vendor, after all) only announced certification for Weblogic 12c on Java 8 in September 2014, 6 months after Java 8 released. Of course many enterprise customers are slow to move by their nature, be it corporate standards, or legacy applications, or whatever. However that to me is a reason to learn Java 6 well now (and a classroom environment may facilitate that better), and upskill on 7/8 when you have that down, as it will pretty much all still be applicable in the later releases, but if you start with Java 7 you could find yourself not being able to use some of the new features and having to relearn the old way.

    To be honest though, if this is the OP's flat out first steps into programming, they're unlikely to notice the difference for quite a while in any case!


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