7 Java Developer Skills That Are In High Demand: Become Candidate #1

In 2020, Java celebrated its 15th anniversary. Despite its age and legacy, Java isn’t going to go away soon. Statista reveals that as many as 40% of developers all over the world code in Java. With this figure, Java lands in the fifth place in the worldwide rating of programming languages.

Therefore, developers pursuing a career of a Java developer, need to gain a competitive advantage. In our new blog post, we’ll share 7 Java developer skills you need to become a demanded professional.

Java Developer Skills That Will Skyrocket Your Career

1. Basic Java skills

What does a Java developer do? They build various software: from desktop and web applications to cloud systems and mobile apps. Java’s capabilities stretch to Big Data apps along with Python. 

If you want to succeed in your career as a Java developer, consider our Java technologies list:

• Object-oriented programming (OOP) principles as Java is an OOP language.
• Relational databases, such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, and MariaDB. Writing MySQL queries will come in handy as well. 
• Popular version control systems like Git and BitBucket.
• Working with an integrated development environment (IDE) like IntelliJ IDEA.
• Web frontend technologies like HTML, CSS, and JQuery.

2. Additional language or technology

Different frameworks and languages solve different programming tasks. That’s why being a programming language polyglot is essential. 

DevSkiller, a developer screening platform, released an annual IT skills report that reveals additional technologies Java developers learn along with their main language. As high as 26.27% of companies are looking for developers with the Java and SQL skill set. Meanwhile, 6.85% of employers need specialists with a Java + JavaScript stack.

In addition to the language itself, developers work in a specific environment. Thus, the most popular Java skills include Selenium, Android, Spring/Spring Boot, and JPA/Hibernate.

3. Spring framework 5

In 2020, more than 2,000 websites are using the Spring framework to build Java applications. This framework is something similar to a library, with a small exception. Using a library, you simply create objects of the classes, call the methods, and get a desired result.

Spring tries to deviate from tight connectivity (when classes directly depend on other classes and interfaces from this framework), and use annotations for this purpose. Currently, Spring is based on the Model-View-Controller (MVC) framework that separates operations, business, and representation layers. Developers appreciate Spring for its great object injection capabilities, elegant syntax, simplicity, automation testing tools like JUnit 5, and low barrier to entry even for Java newbies.

4. Android + Kotlin

Many developers start developing mobile apps, omitting the web development phase. Knowledge of Kotlin to develop Android applications will help you stand out of a competition.

In fact, the Android platform is slowly moving to Kotlin which is basically a modified Java language.

5. Unit testing

As your application grows, it becomes more laborious to maintain it and write automated tests that include unit and integration tests that require launching an application. In Java, deployment and assembly of an application isn’t fast. 

That’s when unit testing tools like JUnit and TestNg come into play. These frameworks speed up writing of automated tests, offer an easy syntax, and provide you with an immediate feedback on passed tests. 

Tools like JUnit JUnit promotes the idea of “testing first” approach that increases the productivity of the programmer and the stability of the codebase, which in turn reduces the burden on the programmer and the time spent on debugging.

6. Principles of SOLID

Object-oriented programming has brought new approaches to application design. For example, OOP allowed developers to combine entities in separate classes designed to solve particular  development tasks. 

Robert Martin (known as Uncle Bob in a developers community) has developed five principles of object-oriented programming and design under the acronym SOLID:

• S: Single Responsibility Principle. Its main idea is the following: a class should only be responsible for one thing. If a class is responsible for solving several problems, its subsystems that implement the solution of these problems turn out to be connected with each other.
• O: Open-Closed Principle. Entities like classes, modules, and functions must be open for extension, but not for modification.
• L: Liskov Substitution Principle. Subclasses should be able to replace their superclasses.
• I: Interface Segregation Principle. Create interfaces designed for a specific client. Clients shouldn’t depend on interfaces they don’t use.
• D: Dependency Inversion Principle. The dependency object should be an abstraction, not something specific. Higher-level modules shouldn’t depend on lower-level modules. Abstractions shouldn’t depend on details.

These five principles are aimed at increasing the quality of applications and improving their maintainability. 

However, the use of OOP doesn’t mean that the software you’ll build will automatically be protected from incomprehensible, bulky code difficult to maintain. A skillful developer should master these principles to use them whenever it’s relevant.

7. DevOps tools

Among top Java skills, knowledge of DevOps is a must. A skillful developer must be familiar with continuous integration (CI), continuous deployment (CD), and Jenkins’ role in both processes.

For senior level developers whose responsibilities often include implementing coding best practices and creating manuals and scripts, a solid knowledge of popular DevOps tools like Docker, Chef, Kubernetes, Maven, and Jenkins is even more critical.

TL;DR

These are Java skills in demand in 2020 beyond:

• The latest version Java
• OOP principles
• SOLID principles to write maintainable, clean code
• Spring Framework to create server-side code
• Hibernate to work with databases
• Relational databases like MySQL and non-relational databases (NoSQL, MongoDB)
• RESTful and JSON for providing and receiving data

If you feel like joining the team of Java experts to boost your skills, check out our open vacancies. We’re always looking for skilled Java developers who will bring their expertise to our professional community and help us build quality working processes within our international team.  

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